Karen Dreyer
Executive Director
Karen Dreyer has focused her career on increasing access to opportunities for learning and healthy development for young people. She is passionate about doing work from an asset based perspective, recognizing what strengths a person or community possesses and then building on those to reach positive outcomes.
Karen worked at The Pittsburgh Project on Pittsburgh’s North Side for 15 years, helping children and their families access high quality learning opportunities. Her greatest joy there was watching young people overcome significant barriers to enter the workforce and to become the first in their families to pursue and complete post-secondary education. Karen most recently served as the Director of Child Nutrition Programs at Greater Pittsburgh Community Food bank, where she led a team that provided resources, technical assistance, and people connections to schools and youth serving organizations in 11 counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania to ensure that kids have enough to eat for healthy development. Karen co-led a statewide coalition that focused on advocacy, information sharing and collaboration to improve access to and participation in child nutrition programs such as school meals and summer meal programs. Karen has a PhD in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied effective interventions for young people living in poverty.
