Karen Hawley Miles

Karen Hawley Miles is executive director and founder of Education Resource Strategies, a nonprofit organization in Boston, Massachusetts, that specializes in strategic planning, organization, and resource allocation in urban public school districts. Her work aims to help states, districts, and schools rethink resource allocation and empower principals to create great schools and redirect resources to promote excellent teaching, individual attention for children, and productive instructional time. Miles has worked intensively with urban districts in Los Angeles, Chicago, Albuquerque, Boston, Baltimore, Providence, Rochester and Cincinnati to deeply analyze and improve their funding systems, school-level resource use, and investment in professional development. She has taught school leaders at Harvard University, in school districts, with New Leaders for New Schools, and with the Broad Institute for School Boards. Currently, she directs a multiyear project funded by the Gates Foundation to understand the costs and organization of small schools and to help districts organize to better support them. Prior to her work at Education Resource Strategies, she worked at Bain & Company as a strategy and management consultant for hospitals and corporations. She has a BA in economics from Yale University and a doctorate in education from Harvard University, specializing in school organization, change, and finance.