Senior Education Researcher, SRI Education
Karin Ganz, MA, has more than 30 years of experience in high-quality, comprehensive early care and education programming that serves and improves outcomes for children birth to five. Ganz brings a depth of knowledge in infant and early childhood mental health, state systems building, coordination of mixed-delivery early learning services, individualized technical assistance, and co-design approaches that result in equitable policy development.
At SRI, Ganz provides technical assistance and leadership on the Minnesota Mixed-Delivery Action Lab and Comparable Competencies Framework projects with the Minnesota Department of Education and Department of Human Services. In this role, she collaborates with the project team and state partners on the implementation of human-centered design approaches and gathers feedback from communities and providers to inform future mixed-delivery services and comparable competency structures in Minnesota.
A former preschool teacher, parent education coordinator, child therapist, and mental health manager with Head Start, Ganz is passionate about children’s social-emotional development, differentiated family engagement, inclusionary programming, meaningful supports for early learning staff, and equity-based approaches that disrupt inequitable systems and practices that perpetuate disparities.
Before joining SRI, Ganz was the senior administrator for the birth-to-five Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) and birth-to-five Early Childhood Intervention Prevention Services (ECLIPSE) with Washington State’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families. During her state work, Ganz developed and led the redesign and implementation of expansion for state-funded prekindergarten and infant mental health programming. She fostered collaborative and cohesive partnerships through co-facilitation of a joint state agency coordinated recruitment and enrollment strategy, provision of informed Tribal pathway components, development of a joint-agency statement on inclusion, and implementation of joint-agency Pyramid Model cohorts. She has deep experience in data-informed practices, including performance-based contracting and monitoring of provider compliance using strengths-based approaches to enhance and improve provider capacity.
Ganz earned an MA in applied behavior science, systems counseling, from Bastyr University, Seattle. She also holds a BA in liberal arts from the Evergreen State College, Olympia.
