Susan B. Karches has a B.A. in English from Georgetown University and worked at John Blair and Company in New York before starting a family. She and her late husband, Peter, also a graduate of the Class of 1974, raised four children in Locust Valley, New York, three of whom are Georgetown alumni and one a Bowdoin College alumna. Together with her husband Thomas Owens, they have seven children and 14 grandchildren.  

Karches served on the Board of Regents of Georgetown and the Board of Directors, where she was a member of the Committee on Strategic Development and Advancement and the Committee on Main Campus Affairs. She also was a member of the Student Affairs Working Group that enabled Board members to meet with student leaders to focus on their campus experiences. Since her family established the Peter F. Karches Scholarship at Georgetown in 2007, she and her children have enjoyed being actively involved with many of the students who are the first in their family to attend college and who credit much of their success to the Georgetown Scholars Program.  

Karches is a former Trustee of Friends Academy and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. There she and Peter established the Karches Center for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Research. She is also a member of Advancing Women in Science and Medicine at the Feinstein and serves on the Campaign Executive Committee for Northwell Health. Karches and her children established the Karches Neural Bypass and Brain Computer Interface Laboratory to advocate for the field of bioelectric medicine, where research is enabling individuals with paralysis to regain movement and sensory feedback.  Karches serves on the Board of the Karches Foundation, which focuses on education and medical research.