Kristen King is an education data, research, and technical assistance leader with 15 years of experience supporting federal, state, and territorial education agencies. She spent more than a decade with the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences and National Center for Education Statistics, where she served as a federal program officer, project director, and research lead for the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant Program. Her work has supported more than 25 state education agencies and their partners across K–12, early childhood, postsecondary education, and workforce systems.

King originated and led the SLDS Capacity Survey, the program’s first standardized national measure of state longitudinal data system capacity, taking the initiative from concept and metric development through OMB clearance, national fielding, analysis, and publication. A through line of her work is translating complex data, research, and policy into clear, compelling stories and actionable guidance for diverse audiences, from researchers and technical teams to practitioners, agency leaders, and policymakers. She brings extensive experience helping states use evidence to understand where they are, communicate what their data reveal, and turn those insights into practical strategies for improving systems and outcomes.

Her experience spans federal program administration, contractor-delivered technical assistance, and direct state and territorial implementation, including leadership of the Virgin Islands Department of Education’s Office of Federal Grants and her current work supervising federal grants management and review for a multi-agency engagement with the Texas Office of the Governor. She holds an M.S. in Government Analytics and Data Science from Johns Hopkins University and a B.S. in Management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.