Karen DaPonte Thornton is a research fellow with the Acquisition Innovation Research Center, an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, and a director on the Procurement Round Table, where she serves on the Acquisition Workforce committee. She brings a deep understanding of the federal and military workforce and its needs to the Alliance. She previously served as Counsel on the staff of the Committee on Armed Services for the U.S. House of Representatives, where she was responsible for legislation and oversight related to acquisition policy and successfully negotiated hundreds of provisions in the annual National Defense Authorization Act.Before returning to public service, Ms. Thornton was director of the Government Procurement Law Program at the George Washington University Law School (GW Law), where she launched the Master of Studies in Law in Government Procurement degree for non-attorneys and the Government Procurement Law Concentration for JD students.

Prior to her appointment as director, Ms. Thornton was a member of the GW Law Legal Research & Writing faculty and taught first-year and upper-level courses. She began her legal career as an Army JAG officer and procurement attorney in the Office of the Chief Counsel at Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and has served in the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Ms. Thornton earned her BA in Political Science from Providence College, where she was a 3-year ROTC scholarship recipient and Distinguished Military Graduate, her JD from the Georgetown University Law Center, and her LLM in Government Procurement Law from GW Law.