Erin O’Hara has spent more than twenty years developing her expertise in state education policy from preschool through postsecondary. Erin currently serves on the Board of Education for Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Most recently, Erin served as the founding Executive Director of the Tennessee Education Research Alliance, a nationally recognized research-practice partnership between Peabody College and the Tennessee Department of Education. Under Erin’s leadership TERA’s research helped to inform several state initiatives including school leadership networks, revisions to the state’s school improvement strategies, and prioritizing diversity in Tennessee’s workforce. Erin also led the Tennessee Educator Survey for more than ten years, ensuring that teachers’ voices are an important part of the policy conversation at the state and district level.

Prior to TERA, Erin created and led the division of Data and Research as an Assistant Commissioner at the Tennessee Department of Education. In that role, Erin managed the department’s innovative work in accountability, assessment, data quality, and research. She also led implementation of the state’s new accountability system under a waiver from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, worked on the development of Innovation Zones working with the lowest performing schools in four school districts, and designed a data and research structure that has continued to allow department and external leadership to uncover strategies with the greatest potential impact.

Erin served as a policy advisor to Governor Phil Bredesen, working as a lead on Tennessee’s winning Race to the Top application. She then transitioned to lead the initial implementation phase of the $501 million grant under Governor Bill Haslam. Erin also spent four years with the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, directing research and policy analysis for the state’s lottery scholarship program and leading early implementation and data analysis for the state’s first GEAR UP college access grant. Before moving to Tennessee, Erin supported the founding of the Afterschool Alliance and the National Network of Statewide Afterschool Networks.

Erin has a Master of Public Policy from Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and a Bachelor of Arts in American government and African and African American studies from the University of Virginia. She lives in Nashville with her husband and two children.