Chris Thorn

Dr. Thorn is the Chief of Partnerships and Strategy at Partners in School Innovation. He led program development and implementation for his first five years at Partners. In 2012, he joined the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a Senior Research Associate and Director of Knowledge Management. While there, he led work on applying improvement science to persistent problems in K-12 education and higher education. Dr. Thorn spent the first 20 years of his career at the UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research. His work there focused on identifying and addressing organizational and technical gaps in information systems in education, selecting and using multiple measures of educational effectiveness, and designing and implementing decision support systems at the state-, district-, and school levels. Chris received a B.A. in economics and German language from Indiana University, an M.A. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an M.A. in international relations from The Johns Hopkins University, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Chris earned his doctorate in sociology (focused on planning and decision-making) from the University of Bielefeld, Germany.