Karen A. Curley, MSW, MPH

Karen Curley is an executive coach, educator, and organizational development consultant specializing in helping individuals, teams, and organizations reach their maximum potential. She has spent the last 30 years integrating a systems perspective into building sustainable solutions that address business challenges and achieve desired results. Karen's style is highly interactive and builds off of the experience of her clients/program participants. Using a mix of evidence-based content, case studies, and scenarios, individual reflection and small group activities, learning sessions are meant to provoke discussion, to provide and build on foundational skills and to set in motion practical ways to apply the learning. 

Karen began her career in non-profit elder care, where she discovered her knack for designing learning programs to improve the lives of homebound elders at Boston Senior Home Care. Her professional journey took her into the field of work/life balance where she spent 5 years at Work/Family Directions, restructuring referral networks, leading cross-functional teams and working to define dependent care strategies for clients in the American Business Collaboration. This work led to a passion for helping organizations achieve and sustain excellence and brought Karen into academic medical centers where she spent the next 15 years designing, developing and implementing leadership development solutions, first at The University of Colorado Hospital and then at UMass Memorial Healthcare. Karen spent the last 5 years at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, rebuilding a static training team into a sought-after internal consultancy, serving the main Boston campus and its 6 regional campuses across New England.

Throughout her career, Karen has served as a catalyst to activate positive change and drive sustainable outcomes in leaders, leadership teams and organizations. Karen’s ability to quickly assess needs, design and implement solutions and evaluate effectiveness resonates well with today’s business model demanding flexibility and agility. Her expertise in project management, process improvement and organizational effectiveness has made Karen a sought-after speaker, facilitator and consultant across the healthcare, legal and retail business sectors. As an Executive Coach, Karen has worked closely with Physician Executives, Nursing leaders, leaders in transition and high potential leaders at all points along the pipeline, to bring their unique talents forward and translate intention in action.

Karen continues to work in the academic sector as a visiting lecturer within Leadership Development Programs and with executive audiences at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and the Yale University School of Management. She is currently the Vice President, Client Solutions, for The Leadership Development Group, Inc., a women-owned and operated consulting firm serving local and global clients across the health ecosystem.

Karen holds a B.A. in Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and both a M.S.W. and a M.P.H from Boston University.