Karen VanAusdal is the Senior Program Officer for Education for the Polk Bros. Foundation in Chicago. She joined PBF after serving as the Vice President of Practice for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), where she oversaw efforts to support and scale SEL work in school districts across the country and with collaborators around the globe. Prior to that role, she served as the founding Executive Director for the Office of Social and Emotional Learning for Chicago Public Schools. Karen started her career as an elementary school teacher in the Washington, DC area. From there, she joined Peace First, where she designed and managed a whole-school SEL model in the Boston Public Schools. She has earned 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.