Dr. Karen Hardy is the Principal and Chief Risk Officer of Strategic Leadership Advisors LLC and a 2023 inducted Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). She is an adjunct faculty of the GMU School of Business CRO Program. As the former deputy CRO at the US Department of Commerce and ERM leader at the National Institutes of Health, during her federal career, Dr. Hardy has collectively led the development of ERM practices across 39 public organizations. At Commerce, a multi-billion dollar cabinet-level agency, she designed and led ERM across 12 bureaus from the ground up, impacting 47,000 employees. Her program and operation were cited by GAO as a leading practice across government, which included NOAA, recipient of the AFERM Luminary Award.
Dr. Hardy served as the first Senior Advisor for Risk Management Policy at OMB, working side-by-side with the Deputy Director for Management and U.S. Controller in establishing ERM policy across the federal government. She is the original contributing author of ERM language in OMB A-11 and the revised July 2016 OMB Circular A-123. Dr. Hardy authored the first research paper on the subject of ERM in government for the IBM Center for the Business of Government in 2010. In 2015-2017, she was selected to serve as a member of the PwC COSO ERM Advisory Board. In 2014, she received the Most Promising New Textbook Award for her book “Enterprise Risk Management: A Guide for Government Professionals.
As a founding Board Vice President of the Association of Federal Enterprise Risk Management, Dr. Hardy received the Risk Management Hall of Fame Award in 2017. She continues to serve as a senior advisor for numerous agencies, boards, and NGOs, nationally and internationally. Dr. Hardy is a graduate of the Federal Executive Institute and recipient of two Bronze Medal Awards and holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership and Human Resource Development.