In 2013, Sarah Leen became the first female Directory of Photography for National Geographic Magazine and Visual Media.

For nearly 20 years prior Leen worked as an independent photographer for National Geographic magazine. She has won numerous awards for both her photography and photo editing from the Pictures of the Year, the World Press Photo Awards and the International Photography Awards. As a graduate student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism she was the first woman to win the College Photographer of the Year award. In 2024 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

In 2019, she co-founded The Visual Thinking Collective as a community for independent women photo editors, teachers and consultants that support photographers and publishers in visual storytelling. Leen teaches visual storytelling and photo editing at the Missouri Photo Workshops, the Maine Media Workshops, the Santa Fe Photography Workshops, the Eddie Adams Workshop and her own Female Perspectives in Visual Storytelling,  

Editing photography books is her passion. She has been the photo editor for serval books some published by FotoEvidence including HABIBI, by Antonio Faccilongo, The Phoenician Collapse by Diego Ibarra Sanchez which won the 2022 Lucie Book Award for Independent Book, and We Cry in Silence by Smita Sharma. In 2023 she was the photo editor of Ukraine: A War Crime which was shortlisted for the 2023 Recontres d' Arles Historical Book Award, was the winner of the IPA Book Photographer of the Year and won Photography Book of the Year award from the Pictures of the Year International. 

She is Co-Chairman of the Board of the International League of Conservation Photographers, on the Lucie Awards Board of Advisors, on the Advisory Council for the Eddie Adams Workshop, a member of The Photo Society, and an inductee into the Missouri Journalism Hall of Fame.