Karen Drezner, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Karen Drezner has over two decades of rich experiences as an organizational leader. As a lifelong educator, she has scaled a number of organizations, developed several dynamic, diverse teams and designed, launched and facilitated significant improvement efforts in traditional public, charter and independent schools as a founder, leader and board member and consultant.
Karen particularly loves the adaptive work of facilitative coaching. She is purposeful and goal-oriented, placing a high value on building trusting relationships and a culture of collaboration. Karen is a curious observer and listener, a thoughtful questioner and a direct and sensitive provider of feedback.
Karen previously served as the Chief Strategy Officer at Amber Charter Schools, Executive Director of the Lynch Leadership Academy at the Carroll School of Management/Lynch School of Education at Boston College and the Director of Leadership Development at Achievement First. She was the Founder and Executive Director of the Bronx Charter School for Children. Karen currently serves on the board of Inwood Academy of Leadership Charter School in northern Manhattan.
After earning her B.A. from Clark University and her M.Ed. from Boston College, as a Donovan Urban Education Fellow, Karen
completed an executive MBA from Columbia Business School’s Institute for Nonprofit Management.
Karen received her Ed.D. in Educational and Organizational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Her dissertation study, entitled "Leading Culturally Responsive Change: Learning from Leaders of Intentionally Diverse Public Charter Schools," highlighted the significance of formative experiences on leader critical consciousness development and indicated that these leaders, in order to facilitate culturally responsive change, learn from, lean into and leverage tensions, understand change as continuous rather than episodic and work in collaboration and community.
Karen resides in New York City with her super sweet rescue dog named Stanley.
She can be reached at karendrezner@leveragingleaders.com.
A Few Testimonials...
