Current Position and Past Experience
Karen Gross is a Washington, DC based advisor and consultant to non-profit schools, organizations and governments. She focuses on strategies for vulnerable student success across the K-20 pipeline. A frequent author, speaker and commentator on issues in education, she is the author of the forthcoming book, Are You Lastic?, about systemic approaches to enable student post-secondary degree attainment. She also serves as an Affiliate of the Penn Center for MSIs at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

For eight years, she was President of Southern Vermont College, a small, private, affordable, four-year college founded in 1926 (located in Bennington). The College, with data-supported initiatives geared to first gen student success, offers a career-launching education with a liberal arts core. Approximately 22 percent of the student population is diverse, more than 45 percent are Pell eligible and more than 65 percent are first generation.

In 2012, Gross served as Senior Policy Advisor to the US Department of Education in Washington, DC. In that capacity, she worked on the President’s 2020 Initiative and the interagency task force charged with redesigning the transition assistance program for returning service members and their families. She currently serves as the Senior Counsel for Widmeyer Communications.

Previously, she was a tenured law professor for two decades with expertise in consumer finance and over-indebtedness, including student debt.

Education, Honors and Achievements
She is a cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Smith College and a cum laude graduate of Temple University School of Law, having spent her final year of law school at the University of Chicago.

Personal Details and Community Involvement
Gross is the proud mother of a college professor who is a health economist. She spends her spare time in Vermont, skiing in winter, enjoying theatre and dance in the Berkshires in the summer and enjoying Vermont’s glorious four seasons.

Connect
You can find Gross on Twitter @KarenGrossEdu and through her LinkedIn profile.