The Garrison Institute is pleased to welcome Karen Doyle Grossman as the new Executive Director.
Karen joins the Institute from SIY Global, where she served as the Global Head of Operations. In this role, Karen led due diligence for the company’s seed investment, coordinated its transition from non-profit to for-profit, and facilitated the development of its Go To Market strategy. She also oversaw a network of 600 certified teachers delivering programs in 17 languages across 50 countries. Karen was responsible for supervising People and Culture, Finance and Accounting, Certified Teachers, and Operations in this position.
Prior to this role, Karen was CEO and Founder of Mediative.io, a leadership consulting firm combining ancient wisdom practices and adult development theory. The firm provided an in-depth, 6-month program for founders and executives seeking to achieve an advanced stage of development in personal and professional lives. Karen was a coach for 30 individual clients at various stages of their contemplative leadership journeys.
Karen also served at the Vice President of Institutional Advancement at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. Here, she led yoga research, philanthropy, and development divisions, expanded diversity scholarships programs, and supported the Board to recruit new Trustees and assess the feasibility of a capital campaign.
Her career also led her to become the Executive Director of World Teach, a global network that trained and placed thousands of teachers worldwide, where she managed 23 staff and 400 new volunteer teachers each cycle. She also led Mercy Corps’ microfinance initiatives and served as the agency’s founding Vice President of Social Innovations. There, she created, launched, and managed this new practice area, including an agency-wide strategy for amplifying Mercy Corps’ global impact. Finally, she held the positions of the Executive Director of the Young Leadership Initiative founder of MicroMentor at the Aspen Institute, where she launched an effort to extend Institute programming to the next generation.
Karen holds a B.A. in Government from the University of Virginia, an M.A. in Education Policy Studies from The George Washington University, and is pursuing her Ed.D. from the Teachers College at Columbia University in Adult Learning and Leadership. Her doctoral research centers on the role of contemplative practices in sustaining environmental professionals working in context of existential threat.
In her new position as Executive Director of the Garrison Institute, Karen will be charged in leading organizational strategy, Board development, fundraising, external relations, and strategic partnership development. She will help to build upon the Institute’s programs that fulfill their mission, vision and values, support the development of a 3-5 year strategic plan, and lead the Senior Management Team into the next phase of the Institute’s growth. Karen will report to Jonathan F.P. Rose, the Chair of the Board. Karen will begin this new role on March 13, 2023.
About The Garrison Institute
The Garrison Institute’s mission is to apply the skills and wisdom cultivated through contemplative practice, together with the insights emerging from science, to today’s urgent social and environmental challenges, leveraging transformational change and helping build a more compassionate, resilient future. The Institute envisions a future in which contemplation is widely recognized and practiced as a pathway to social and environmental transformation. Contemplation infuses our actions with the awareness that we live in a relational world, where everyone and everything is connected and interdependent. Together with insights from science and ethics, this awareness will increasingly be cultivated and applied to changing behaviors and mindsets, shifting the current paradigm towards a holistic, interconnected one. To learn more, please visit www.garrisoninstitute.org
