Kara Gardner earned her Ph.D. in music and humanities from Stanford University. As a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, she taught for four years in Stanford’s Introduction to the Humanities Program.

In addition, she designed and led classes on popular music, music of the Americas, music appreciation, and music and gender at the University of San Francisco for more than ten years. In 2008, she received a teaching award for innovative pedagogy and commitment to student learning from USF. She also taught writing-intensive seminars for graduate students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her book Agnes de Mille: Telling Stories in Broadway Dance was published in August, 2016 by Oxford University Press. She joined the Minerva Schools at KGI in the fall of 2013, and currently serves as Associate Dean of Faculty.