Director, Office of Planning, Analysis and Evaluation
Health Resources and Services Administration
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Karen T. Comfort serves as Director of the Office of Planning, Analysis and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). In this role, Ms. Comfort provides agency-wide leadership for performance management, strategic planning, data governance, and innovation activities to strengthen HRSA programs and operations.
Prior to joining HRSA, Ms. Comfort served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Equal Employment Opportunity, Strategic Engagement, and Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where she provided executive leadership in the administration and compliance with the laws, regulations, policies and guidance that prohibit discrimination in the federal workplace for employees and applicants.
Ms. Comfort is a results-driven leader with more than 25 years of federal service. Prior to joining HHS, she served as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inaugural Chief Employee Experience Officer where she developed and implemented strategies to improve USDA’s outreach and education, recruitment and hiring, employee training and development, promotion and advancement, and awards and recognition of its workforce. Ms. Comfort led initiatives significantly enhancing internal communications between USDA’s leadership and its 100,000+ geographically dispersed workforce. Ms. Comfort was also USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service’s Deputy Associate Administrator/Deputy Chief Operating Officer where she directed and managed the agency’s strategic planning and key performance measures development, budget formulation and execution, change management initiatives, internal business process improvement and re-engineering, and project management.
Ms. Comfort is a proven senior executive with extensive experience leading large-scale transformation using Prosci ADKAR techniques, optimizing enterprise performance, and improving operational efficiency across complex federal organizations. She is recognized for building high-impact teams, managing budgets exceeding $700M, streamlining systems and processes, and delivering data-driven improvements.
She graduated from Trinity Washington University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and was inducted into both the Lambda Pi Eta Communications and Alpha Sigma Lambda Honor Societies. She also earned a Master of Public Administration from The American University in Washington, D.C.