About Karen Squires-Foelsch

Karen D. Squires is the Vice President, Content Support Services for Pearson Educational Measurement, a subsidiary of Pearson Education, the world’s largest education business. PEM has been a trusted partner in district, state and national assessments for more than 50 years. As a pioneer and the largest comprehensive provider of educational assessment products, services and solutions, PEM helps states and large school districts meet the requirements of education reform.

Karen Squires manages the day-to-day operations of 200+ person Content Support Services organization, encompassing item and test development activities from a content and editorial support perspective. She is responsible for administrative management, budget support, and business processes for all of Test & Measurement Services: Content Support Services, Psychometric Services, and Research Services groups. Ms. Squires guides business development, manages bid and proposal support efforts, and oversees sub-contractor relationships. She monitors all financial reports, program budgets, business agreements and oversees overall delivery of services for Test and Measurement Services. Under Ms. Squires’ leadership, in less than five years PEM has secured ten contracts in item and test development worth over $50 Million. Before joining Pearson’s TMS team, she led the IT Services function supporting PEM and two other business units. She restructured the IT Services function, implementing service-based costing, and IT process documentation and development during a three year period of double-digit growth within the supported businesses. Prior to joining Pearson, she held IT positions with Monsanto Company in the corporate, agricultural, chemical, and pharmaceutical divisions.

Karen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly UMR) (1989) and a Master of Business Administration, Executive program, from Washington University in St. Louis (1999). At Pearson, she is the first non-sales support person to receive the Most Valuable Player award from the PEM Sales & Marketing group for her outstanding support of increased sales. Karen has served on the computer science advisory board at the Missouri University of Science and Technology for 10 years. She is the founding President of the Greater Iowa City Area Dollars for Scholars chapter which provides scholarships for post-secondary education. The Greater Iowa City Area Dollars for Scholars chapter has given $36,000 in scholarships in its first 3 years of service. She is the past chairperson of the Pearson Education Cares charitable campaign supporting United Way and Community Health Charities and was recognized for leading Pearson in a 42% increase in United Way giving.