Carol O'Leary

Carol O’Leary serves as a Contracting Officer within the Contracts and Acquisitions Management unit of the U.S. Department of Education, where she leads the procurement of professional services critical to advancing postsecondary education policy, research, and institutional capacity. She manages full lifecycle acquisitions under FAR Part 12 and Part 37, primarily securing expert consulting, training, and analytical services to support federal student aid systems, data modernization, and regulatory compliance initiatives. Her work directly enables evidence-based decision-making across the higher education ecosystem, ensuring that procurement aligns with the agency’s mission to strengthen the infrastructure underpinning national education outcomes. O’Leary maintains a consistent and strategic relationship with LPE-STRATEGIES LLC, a trusted vendor specializing in education policy analysis and professional development services. Her contracting patterns reflect a preference for long-term, performance-based partnerships with firms that demonstrate deep subject-matter expertise in postsecondary education systems. She prioritizes collaborative, transparent procurement processes that foster accountability and measurable outcomes, often utilizing indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) and requirements-based contracts to ensure agility and responsiveness. She maintains a 100% Total Small Business Set-Aside policy across all her procurements, fully embracing FAR 19.5 to maximize opportunities for small businesses. Her commitment to socioeconomic equity is unwavering, with all awards directed exclusively to small business concerns, ensuring that contracting dollars support innovation and capacity-building within the small business community. Her procurement portfolio is exclusively focused on NAICS 611430—Professional and Management Development Training—reflecting her specialization in securing high-quality training, curriculum development, leadership coaching, and institutional effectiveness consulting services. O’Leary’s domain expertise lies in supporting the professional growth of education administrators, data analysts, and compliance officers, ensuring that federal investments in human capital directly enhance the quality and integrity of the nation’s postsecondary education systems.