Karli Stander

Karli Stander is the director of innovation and partnerships at Stanford Impact Labs. She builds, manages, and supports research-practice partnerships and helps faculty and impact lab teams implement their research insights. Karli is also expanding work on regional challenges. She recently facilitated part of the Silicon Valley Recovery Roundtable, a 100-day effort convened by San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo with 59 business and community leaders tasked with guiding Silicon Valley’s recovery from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Previously, Karli spent more than three years as deputy director of innovation for the City of Los Angeles, leading a team of designers, data scientists, and project managers to implement policies, programs, and tools to deliver better outcomes for Los Angeles residents. Her projects focused on improving equity in public safety, police recruitment and hiring, housing production, homelessness and public health response, workforce development, and gender initiatives.  

Karli has more than 12 years of experience identifying and implementing innovative, data‐driven strategies for organizations to improve the way they operate and deliver services. She spent eight years in management consulting running policy and IT implementation projects for government agencies at the federal, state, and county level for clients like CalPERS, Covered California, the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, LA County Department of Public and Social Services, the LA County Office of Education. 

Karli has a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and a master’s degree in Health Administration from the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy. She is a former All-American softball player and ice cream entrepreneur. She is passionate about sports, her 11-year-old pekepoo Ari, and listening to podcasts. She has visited 31 of the country’s national parks–halfway through her mission to visit all 62 of them.