Karoline Homer Ryan

Katie Ryan returned to the Law School in the fall of 2019. She co-teaches the State and Local Government Policy Clinic. Previously, she had served as staff attorney for the Education Law Clinic at Harvard Law School as well as a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in its Child Advocacy Program. Her areas of focus include special education, school discipline and the impact of trauma on children in schools.

From 2008-13, Ryan was the director of the Child Advocacy Pro Bono Project at the Law School, which, in partnership with the Legal Aid Justice Center and area private attorneys, provides representation for children in the juvenile justice system and children with disabilities in public school. Ryan also supervised students in the Law School’s Child Advocacy Clinic.

Ryan graduated from Dartmouth College in 1987 and earned her law degree from the University of Virginia in 1992. Early in her career, she received an Echoing Green fellowship to develop a child advocacy project in San Diego, worked on education reform issues at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York, and served as deputy counsel for a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.