Karla Starr was born in Buffalo, NY and attended New York University, where she was the editor-in-chief of the school’s oldest literary magazine as a sophomore. After college, she taught middle school math and English in New Orleans with Teach For America.
Starr later worked at the alt-weekly in Portland, Oregon as the editor of the books section, and then at Seattle Weekly as a staff writer. After living in Buenos Aires for a few years, she returned to the U.S. at the height of the Great Recession, where she was inspired to write her first book. Can You Learn to Be Lucky? Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Others, was named a Fast Company best book of the year.
She coauthored her second book, Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers, with Chip Heath (Switch, Made to Stick). MNC was featured in publications and outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Adam Grant, NPR, and the Next Big Idea Club.
Today, the bestselling author and keynote speaker she leads workshops on behavior, data, and communication. She writes the popular Substack newsletter The Starr Report and is a columnist for Medium.
She’s been featured in NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, The Atlantic, Slate, Popular Science, the Guardian, and is the recipient of an award for the Best Science/Health story from the Society of Professional Journalists.
When not working, she enjoys cooking, reading actual books (here’s a list of her favorites), and taking long walks with her dog Daisy. She is current writing a YA novel with her brother.