Karen S. Cook is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology and vice provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Stanford University. She is also the director of the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS) at Stanford and a trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation. Cook has a long-standing interest in social exchange, social networks, social justice, and trust in social relations.

In 1996, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2004 she received the ASA Social Psychology Section Cooley Mead Award for Career Contributions to Social Psychology.