Karen VanAusdal

Karen VanAusdal is a senior program officer with the Polk Bros. Foundation. Karen comes to the Foundation from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), where she served as vice president of practice and oversaw efforts to support and scale social-emotional learning work in school districts across the country and with collaborators around the globe. Prior to that role, she was the inaugural executive director of Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS’) Office of Social and Emotional Learning. She first joined CPS in 2005 in the Office of Academic Enhancement and later served as manager of youth development and positive behavior supports before becoming director of the Office of Social and Emotional Learning in 2013.

Karen started her career as an elementary school math and literacy teacher in the Washington, D.C., area before joining Peace First to design and manage a holistic support model in the Boston Public Schools. She holds a B.A. from Brown University, an M.Ed. in human development from Harvard University, and an M.Sc. in social policy from the London School of Economics.