Karen Hinton is one of the most colorful and outspoken political communications professionals in Washington and New York. Best known for her role as press secretary to both former Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, she cut her teeth as the press secretary for the first Black congressman from Mississippi since Reconstruction in 1986. The Democratic National Committee hired her in 1989, serving a similar role for Ron Brown, who was the first Black Chairman of the DNC and a key political strategist to elect Bill Clinton as President. In early 2021, Karen published an op-ed coining the term "penis politics" and gained wide media attention with her revelations of Andrew Cuomo's sexual politics. Earlier in her career, Karen was a journalist in Mississippi and Colorado, a cocktail waitress in Aspen, and a high school teacher in Mississippi. Forty-five years after she left her small town in Mississippi (population 408), Karen was ranked as one of the 50 most powerful people in New York public relations. She ascribes her success to ignoring the advice a boy in high school inscribed in her yearbook: "Karen, we love you, but would you please shut up!"