Karen Tenkhoff

Karen Tenkhoff is an award-winning film producer in both live action and animation, and has been a reckoning force behind several path-breaking films, which have been Golden Globe and Academy-award winners and nominees, such as THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES and THE HORSE WHISPERER. As a senior development executive at Disney, she was actively involved in building Disney Feature Animation’s development slate, which includes TANGLED, WINNIE THE POOH and the Oscar winning film FROZEN, (which recently surpassed the $1 billion mark at the global box office), Oscar-nominated WRECK-IT RALPH and MOANA, and the Oscar-winning BIG HERO 6 and ZOOTOPIA. She recently Executive Produced MONICA, which premiered in competition at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. She has also served as senior executive and producing partner to the Oscar-winning director Robert Redford at his company, Wildwood, for a decade. She currently works as an independent producer and consults for major studios, including Fox, Warners and Netflix, among others. Her work is global in scope and she has worked extensively in India and throughout Asia.  

She specializes in working with major talent, writers and directors with an emphasis on story development and structure, as well as collaborating with creators to optimize and fulfill their overall creative visions. Karen has also led or participated as a mentor in development workshops around the world—helping writers and directors to strengthen their screenplays.

She also uses her producing, development and storytelling expertise in service of her writing career. A member of the Writer’s Guild, she has several film and television projects in active development; including a historically-based episodic drama set on the Indian subcontinent for Aaron Kaplan/Kapital; a Miami-set police procedural for Producers Tim Johnson and Jeff Sagansky and a limited series on the life of Galileo, for Cognito Entertainment.