Karen Sonneborn

Karen Sonneborn is Co-founder of Honored (honored.org), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to recognizing and retaining great teachers across the country and to elevating the profession of teaching. 

 Honored’s in-school initiative, Honored Schools, brings Honored’s highly effective teacher appreciation and retention programming directly into school districts across the country. Previously, Karen worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs in New York and in business development at Warner Bros., in Los Angeles.

Karen serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Women in the Arts as well as on the President’s Advisory Council and the National Annual Giving Committee of Princeton University.  She previously served as a Trustee of The Potomac School, where she was a member of the Executive Committee and chaired the Advancement Committee.  She has also served on the boards of San Francisco Ballet (Education Committee); East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring; Ambassadors for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford; the Los Angeles Zoo; and KCET, Southern California’s largest public television station. While with KCET, she co-founded the award-winning KCET Council for Children and Families.

Karen graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Economics from Princeton University, where she played on the Varsity Tennis team for four years and served as Co-Captain her senior year.  She received an MBA with honors from UCLA. She lives in Georgetown with her husband, Bill, and their three children.