Karen Johnson

Karen Johnson is a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Johnson's work centers on identifying opportunities to catalyze research and development of new, breakthrough solutions for K–12 students and teachers. Her focus is to cultivate an ecosystem of educators, researchers, and entrepreneurial product developers to pilot new models, tools, and platforms. Previously, Johnson spent a decade marketing and building K–12 digital tools in social studies, science, mathematics, and language arts. She has spent countless hours conducting usability tests with teachers and working with software developers to implement teachers’ feedback. Johnson’s current area of focus is how we can dramatically improve mathematics learning by black, Latino, and low-income students in grades 3–9 mathematics.