A Ph.D. anthropologist with twenty-six years of experience in creating and managing new initiatives, Karen Hanson became Executive Director of BioStrategy Partners in February 2007.  BioStrategy Partners is a 501c4 service organization that functions as a virtual nursery for young life sciences companies.  Karen also heads up BioLaunch611+ KIZ, a Keystone Innovation Zone that she developed for BioStrategy Partners as a member of the organization’s Advisory Board.

Karen was previously a senior vice president at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce where she developed the organization’s economy-building agenda, including Select Greater Philadelphia and the CEO Council for Growth.   Prior to the Chamber, she was a managing director at Greater Philadelphia First (GPF) where she spearheaded the partnership with the region’s BIO affiliates to win BIO 2005 for Philadelphia. 

Karen was recruited to GPF in 1997 to implement a workforce development initiative with southeastern Pennsylvania’s four community colleges.  She also created and managed the Business/Academic Partnership for the Information Technology Workforce.  Earlier in her career, Karen established a program to facilitate Community Reinvestment Act compliance for New York City’s foreign wholesale banking community and implemented a federally funded study of child abuse fatalities for the New York City Mayor’s Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect. 

A Fulbright Scholar, Karen holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College.  She received her doctorate in Anthropology, and a certificate in East Asian Studies, from Columbia University.