Karen Grace - Baker
Karen holds a B.A. degree from Boston College (Lynch College of Education) in Elementary/Special Education and the MBA degree from Clark-Atlanta University and a specialized certificate in college counseling from the University of California-San Diego. She has been invited as a guest speaker and panelist at several marketing conferences across the country and has been a guest columnist for Kid Screen magazine and Progressive Grocer. Karen was also featured in Essence magazine as one of the "Top Corporate Women in America".
After 20+ years in marketing in corporate America in executive level positions with Pillsbury/General Mills, The Walt Disney Company and Sony Music, Karen followed her continued passion for education and started an educational consulting firm, Right College Choice™. As the chief educational strategist, Karen helps students and parents develop strategies during their middle and high school years to ensure that they maximize their educational and extracurricular opportunities in order to enhance their college acceptances. Rather than aiming for the 'top colleges' as defined by magazine lists and rankings, she assists students in narrowing down and determining the 'right college fit' in order to make their college choice one that they will enjoy and that will provide them with a positive college experience. Over the past few years, she has successfully guided students who have gained acceptances into Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Boston University, Harvard, Yale, Tulane, Boston College, Emory, Grinnell, Lawrence, Tufts, Columbia University, Boston University, Northwestern, Spelman, Harvard, Yale and several University of California colleges among others. Her students have also secured merit scholarships from the Ron Brown Foundation, Jackie Robinson Foundation, Google, The Executive Leadership Council, and have been selected as Presidential Scholars at George Washington and Carnegie Mellon University and have been selected among the semifinalists and finalists for the Young Epidemiology and Coca Cola Scholars program as well as many others.
Karen's skills and talents have also been recognized by author and actor, Hill Harper (CSI: NY) who hired Karen for his nonprofit foundation-Manifest Your Destiny (www.manifestyourdestiny.org) to help guide underserved students on the pathway to college. For the past three years, Karen has conducted workshops on college readiness for both parents and students in the program and has served as the program's college counselor for the foundation's Summer Empowerment Academy.
In addition, Karen has served as a consultant for the Institute of Student Excellence housed at West Los Angeles College providing workshops for several high schools in Los Angeles on college readiness, 'finding the right college match', and scholarship funding as well as coordinating college fairs.
An active member in the community, she is a board member on the Hancock-LaBrea Homeowner's Association and previously served on the board of the nonprofit 'Friends of' parent organizations for both Wonderland Avenue and Third Street elementary schools and chaired the SAT committee for the Los Angeles Chapter of Jack and Jill of America for three terms. Karen was an active member of the LACES Black Parent Association and created the first ever 3.0 Club at the school to recognize and reward students for their academic accomplishments. She is a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Boston College Alumni club, and currently serves on the Advisory Board of the UCLA Extension School of Education and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Hollywood Schoolhouse. She is a member of WACAC (Western Association of College Admissions Counselors) and NACAC (National Association of College Admission Counselors).
Karen recently accepted a position (2011) as the Lead College Counselor Da Vinci Design(charter high school), where she graduated her first cohort of students in 2013. In this inaugural graduating class, 98% of students are attending college (76% at four year colleges, the remainder at two year colleges). Her college acceptances (250 colleges for 120 students) included highly competitive Ivy league colleges, UC and California State universities as well as several public and private universities in all parts of the U.S.
Karen currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband Richard S. Baker, M.D. and is proud mother to two daughters, Lauren (Stanford University'13) and Rachel (Yale'17).
