Speaker Biographies - Non-Profit...

Speaker Biographies

Tonya Allen is chief operating officer and vice president of programs at the Skillman Foundation, a private foundation whose mission is to improve the lives of children in Southeast Michigan. Allen oversees all of the foundation’s grantmaking investments and change-making strategies to improve schools and neighborhoods and to address persistent urban issues. Allen, who joined Skillman’s staff in 2004 as a program director, has also worked as a program officer for the C.S. Mott Foundation and Thompson-McCully Foundation. Allen was also the founder and executive director of Detroit Parent Network, a parent membership organization dedicated to improving educational options for children. Allen’s first foray into philanthropy and community change work began as a division director at Warren/Conner Development Coalition, where she managed the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Rebuilding Communities Initiative. Allen attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she completed her bachelor’s degree, master’s degree in public health and master’s degree in social work.

Fatima Angeles is director of evaluation and organizational learning for The California Wellness Foundation. She joined the Foundation in February 1998 as a program director, where she managed a grantmaking initiative and two portfolios. Before joining TCWF, Angeles was a program associate at The Hasbro Children’s Foundation. She served as director of the South of Market Teen Center and project coordinator for Asian American Communities Against AIDS. Angeles serves as board member for Grantmakers In Health and Northern California Grantmakers. She previously served as chair of the board of the Asian and Pacific Islander Health Forum. She earned her master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Speaker Biographies of 22

Jon Baron is president of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that he founded in 2001. Over the past 10 years, the Coalition’s work with Executive Branch and Congressional policymakers has advanced important evidence-based reforms in U.S. social programs, which have been enacted into law. Based on the Coalition’s work, Baron was twice nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve on the National Board for Education Sciences, and was the Board’s Chair during the last year of his term. He has also served on the National Academies’ Committee on Capitalizing on Science, Technology, and Innovation; and is an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, and recipient of the Society for Prevention Research’s Public Service Award. Baron’s prior positions include: executive director of the Presidential Commission on Offsets in International; program manager for the Defense Department’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program; and Counsel to the House of Representatives Committee on Small Business. Baron holds a law degree from Yale Law School, a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree from Rice University.

Lester Baxter heads the Planning and Evaluation department at the Pew Charitable Trusts, where he and his colleagues use evaluative approaches to inform institutional decisions, strengthen Pew's work, and generate knowledge that advances program objectives. Baxter’s earlier positions were with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the California Energy Commission. He has written and presented widely on topics in public policy and philanthropy. He holds degrees in anthropology from Northwestern University and the University of Hawaii, and a master’s degree in demography and Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Pennsylvania.


Jessica Bearman works with philanthropic and other mission-based organizations, facilitating learning and providing R&D to help them become more effective and responsive. Her work with GEO includes designing and facilitating in-depth learning experiences for grantmakers. She’s the author of Practices that Matter: Taking Stock of Streamlining and Drowning in Paperwork, Distracted from Purpose, as well as many supporting materials and workshops on streamlined and effective application and reporting practices. As a consultant and in her prior role as deputy director of the New Ventures in Philanthropy, she has written and spoken widely about new and established philanthropy and is the author of several studies of giving circles and shared giving, including Giving Together, More Giving Together, and The Impact of Giving Together. Bearman has a master’s degree in organization development from American University/National Training Laboratory. She lives on 40 acres in Idaho with her husband and two wild boys.

Tanya Beer is the associate director for the Center for Evaluation Innovation in Washington, D.C., which aims to build the field of evaluation in areas that are challenging to measure. In addition to publishing on emerging trends in the evaluation of innovative social change efforts, Beer works with foundations, nonprofits and evaluators to develop new evaluation tools, methods, and learning processes. She also serves as co-director of the Evaluation Roundtable, a network of foundation evaluation leaders that seeks to improve how foundations learn about the results of their grantmaking and increase the impact of their work.


Sara Beggs has held a range of senior positions within the Association of Small Foundations over her 13 years with the organization. Currently, she focuses her energy on helping members make the greatest difference possible through the Getting to Impact series. Prior to the impact work, she authored several publications including The Foundation Guidebook, Trustee Handbook, and Primers such as “How to Avoid Self-Dealing” and “Filing the 990-PF”. Begg’s prior work was in the field of community and economic development, after receiving her bachelor’s of science degree in economics from Boston College. Beggs now telecommutes for ASF from Bloomington, IN where her family resides.

Courtney Bourns is a senior program officer at the Henry P. Kendall

Foundation. In this role, she collaborates with her colleagues on the staff and board of the Foundation to determine strategic and grantmaking priorities. She is currently helping to roll out the Foundation’s new grantmaking program focused on building a resilient food system across the six New England states. Bourns joined the foundation in 2011 after three years as vice president of programs with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. There, she directed efforts to advance the field of philanthropy by supporting grantmakers to partner with their grantees in ways that make the biggest difference to grantee effectiveness and ultimately lead to impact. Bourns brought to GEO her expertise in facilitation, organizational development and multi-stakeholder change initiatives. She was the author of GEO’s 2010 publication entitled, Do Nothing About Me Without Me: An Action Guide for Engaging Stakeholders.

Previously, Bourns served as director of organizational development at Conservation International and senior associate at the Interaction Institute for Social Change. Today, she is a board member at the Center for Courage and Renewal. She received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University and her master’s degree from Union Theological Seminary.


Gary Chapman, M.S.W., Ed.S., is executive vice president, National Network for the Communities In Schools national office. Chapman oversees national field support, learning management, research and evaluation and the organization’s role in education transformation for the Communities In Schools network of 14 state offices and nearly 200 local affiliates serving more than 1.3 million students annually. He has spent 13 years with the Communities In Schools network serving as an executive director of a thriving and successful rural affiliate in South Georgia, principal of a public charter high school and nationally overseeing field operations and the expansion of Performance Learning Centers® to increase on-time graduation and college readiness for at-risk high school students. His experience includes education, nonprofit administration, mental health, domestic violence intervention, family therapy and sexual abuse counseling.

Ted Chen joined Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies in August 2012 to

serve as director of evaluation for the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, the Anne Ray Charitable Trust, and the Akaloa Resource Foundation. He designs and implements evaluation strategies to track the progress and impact of the grants made by all three organizations. Chen was previously the director of learning and innovation at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where he led the foundation’s program evaluation and organizational learning efforts, and he was also program director for the Youth and Education department. Before joining the Kellogg Foundation, he was executive director of the Big Idea Foundation, the charitable arm of the media company that produced the VeggieTales video series and other programs for children and families. Prior to this, Chen served as a program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He also conducted research and evaluation at the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. Chen earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Wheaton College, a master’s degree in social work from the University of Michigan and a MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Phillip Chung is the assistant director for research, evaluation and strategic learning at The Colorado Trust. In this role, Chung manages the development and implementation of evaluation initiatives, designs approaches to assess the progress and results of grant strategies and oversees internal and external strategies to foster systematic opportunities for learning. Previously, Chung was an evaluation consultant with the University of Colorado Denver where he focused on issues of health access. As well, he has worked at The Wallace Foundation where he monitored multiple national grant programs focused on improving education leadership practices and policies.


Julia Coffman is director and founder of the Center for Evaluation Innovation. She has more than 20 years of experience as an evaluator, and specializes in evaluation that supports strategic learning, particularly for advocacy, public policy and systems change efforts. For 15 years Coffman worked with the Harvard Family Research Project, a research and evaluation organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Coffman led HFRP’s evaluation work for over a decade, which included evaluating foundation and nonprofit initiatives and publishing The Evaluation Exchange, a nationally renowned periodical on emerging evaluation strategies and issues.

Roberto Cremonini is the founder of Cremonini Consulting Network, helping foundations improve performance through efficient processes, organizational learning, and innovative technology tools. Formerly, Cremonini was chief knowledge & learning officer at the Barr Foundation, where he oversaw evaluation, grants management and information technology and built systems that seamlessly integrate data and documents with the foundation’s processes. He is a former trustee of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. In addition to an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, he received his master’s of science degree in electrical engineering and is PhD in computer science from the University of Bologna.

Nancy Csuti is the director of research, evaluation and strategic learning for The Colorado Trust. She is responsible for creating a framework for establishing strategic priorities, measuring results and evaluating the impact of the foundation’s work. She develops and oversees The Trust’s research, evaluation and strategic learning activities to maximize impact of The Trust’s agenda. Prior to joining The Trust, Csuti lived and worked for more than a decade planning and evaluating public health projects throughout Asia and Africa. She holds a master’s degree in maternal/child health and a doctorate in international health/epidemiology from the Tulane School of Public Health.


Turahn (Rahn) Dorsey joined the Barr Foundation staff as evaluation director in March 2009. Dorsey is a program evaluator and researcher whose over 15 years of experience with Moore and Associates in Southfield, MI and Abt Associates in Cambridge, master’s degree span a number of public policy, community change and public health related issues. The evaluation, research and technical assistance projects in which Mr. Dorsey has participated cover a number of quantitative and qualitative technical areas including outcome and impact analyses, Theory of Change-based program evaluation and technical assistance efforts aimed at enhancing program implementation, impact and replication. While at Abt Associates, Dorsey led or co-led several evaluations of foundation-funded community and systems change efforts including: the evaluations of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Community Voices and Men’s Health initiatives; the Interim Evaluation of the Ventures Program for the Northwest Area Foundation; and the development of a Theory of Change for the Lumina Foundation’s Making Opportunity Affordable initiative. Dorsey’s current responsibilities include developing and implementing data monitoring and evaluation frameworks to track the progress and impact of Barr Foundation education and climate change investments.

Victoria Dunning serves as the vice president for programs of The Global Fund for Children, with oversight of an annual $4.5 million global grants portfolio supporting community-based organizations. This program addresses the most pressing global issues faced by children and youth, including trafficking, forced labor, displacement and migration and access to education for the most marginalized groups. She has been instrumental in defining and developing GFC’s GrantsPlus capacity-building grantmaking model, its accompanying metrics framework, and the streamlined Grantee Pathways to Success – “GPS” – grants management systems and analytics. Dunning has master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College, with language proficiency in French, Spanish, Wolof and Swahili.


Cindy Eby is the director of evaluation at Mile High United Way where she is responsible for evaluation of the organization’s granting practices and direct service programs to guide Mile High United Way’s focus as a community impact organization. Eby's work focuses on bringing evaluation methods and the use of data for decision making to foundations and nonprofits. She is responsible for management of the evaluation for the Early Literacy Social Innovation Fund which supports ten grantees across Colorado to engage in rigorous, impact-focused evaluation of their interventions. Additionally, she leads the cross-initiative work to develop an impactful approach to influencing community outcomes in the areas of School Readiness, Youth Success, and Adult Self Sufficiency. Prior to coming to Mile High United Way, she led the program quality work for Nurse-Family Partnership, a nationally replicated evidence-based prevention program for first-time, low income mothers focused on improving pregnancy health, positive parenting practices and child development while reducing child abuse and neglect. She also previously directed national health services research projects focused on determining factors which impact Medicare client outcomes and worked internationally to support micro-enterprise development programs in Kenya through the Government of Kenya and the European Union.

Melissa Extein is director of strategic learning, research and evaluation for International Programs at American Jewish World Service, where she has worked since 2007. She brings over ten years of consulting and teaching experience, including involvement in courses on leadership and group dynamics at The Wharton School and School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Extein earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Yale University and her doctorate degree in organizational psychology from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, where she based her dissertation on her experience as an AJWS Volunteer Corps member in Thailand.


Matthew Forti is a manager and co-head of the Performance Measurement Practice at the Bridgespan Group, where he helps nonprofits and funders design performance measurement systems for continuous improvement, most notably through his work with the Goldman Sachs Foundation’s 10,000 Women initiative, YMCA’s Achievement Gap Initiative and Bank of America’s Neighborhood Excellence Initiative. Forti has spoken and written extensively on this topic, including through a monthly blog series for Stanford Social Innovation Review called Measuring to Improve. He is also the founding Board Chair of One Acre Fund, a nonprofit that assists over 130,000 smallholder farm families in East Africa to triple their crop yields.

Angela Frusciante, PhD serves as knowledge development officer, and a member of the senior leadership team, at the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund. As a socio-political scholar, Frusciante explores knowledge construction and network learning in change initiatives, particularly efforts at educational change. She has worked on education issues in the private, public and nonprofit sectors; in local, state and national contexts; and in community, intermediary, education and philanthropic organizations. Most recently, she participated as part of the 2012-2013 cohort of the Council on Foundations Career Pathways program that is intended to expand the pipeline for diverse talent in philanthropic leadership.

Kiff Gallagher is founder and CEO of MusicianCorps, which promotes music for social impact—and musicians as public servants—through direct programs, advocacy and leadership development. He started his career serving the Clinton White House on the legislative team that created AmeriCorps. Later as president of Social Venture Network, Gallagher was an advocate in the movements for social entrepreneurship and sustainable business. A lifelong musician, Gallagher has written and produced two critically praised pop-rock albums. He has won leadership awards and recognition from the Aspen Institute, the James Irvine Foundation and GQ magazine’s Gentlemen’s Fund. Gallagher is a graduate of Wesleyan University.


Srik Gopalakrishnan helps lead FSG’s Strategic Learning and Evaluation practice area. Gopalakrishnan came to FSG in 2012 with over twelve years of experience in the social and business sectors. Most recently, in his role as chief impact and learning officer at New Teacher Center, he worked to set up frameworks for impact measurement as well as systems and processes for data-driven learning and improvement. Prior to New Teacher Center, Gopalakrishnan worked on supporting whole systems change in public education in his role as director of evaluation for the Ball Foundation. He has led several rigorous formative, developmental and summative evaluations, as well as projects around organizational design, strategic planning and leadership development. Gopalakrishnan holds an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross Business School and an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology. He has completed a certification in advanced evaluation study from Claremont Graduate University.

Catherine A. Gura is president of The Children’s Guild Foundation, a long-standing Western New York philanthropic organization which seeks to effect change, provide opportunities and promote inclusion and diversity for children with special needs and their families. By advocating on behalf and funding organizations in Western New York, The Children’s Guild Foundation supports programs and services in the areas of healthcare, research, education and therapeutic recreation. Before joining the Foundation in 1996, she served as vice president of St. Francis Hospital of Buffalo, where she was involved in the transition of the private hospital to an outpatient and long term care facility.

Sidney Hargro in his 15-year career in philanthropy has produced a

record of success in community leadership, organizational innovation and performance and strategic grant investment. Since 2009, Hargro has served as the first executive director of the Community Foundation of South Jersey, which serves the southern eight counties of New Jersey. Hargro's goals are to build and implement a foundation strategy that embraces the foundation’s three roles as giving advisor to donors, advocate for philanthropic investment in South Jersey solutions and community convener for the issues that matter in the region. Hargro came to the foundation from The Columbus Foundation in Columbus, Ohio where he was the senior officer of strategy and organizational learning. He also served as the philanthropic advisor for the Siemer Family Foundation, Paul G. Duke Foundation and Central Benefits


Healthcare Foundation. Hargro graduated from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, NC with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and received master’s degrees from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.

Mae Hong is the director of the Chicago office of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. In this role she is responsible for building RPA’s presence in serving individual donors, foundations and corporations throughout the Midwest. Bringing more than 15 years of nonprofit and philanthropy experience to RPA, Hong previously served as program director at the Field Foundation of Illinois. She completed her graduate work in social service administration at The University of Chicago. Prior to entering the nonprofit sector, Hong worked in the publishing industry for several years following her graduation from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Josie Heath is president of The Community Foundation- Boulder County, Colorado. She served eight years as county commissioner and was a 1990 candidate for the United States Senate. She taught at the Kennedy School at Harvard and later served as the assistant to the director of the White House Office of National Service in the Clinton administration. Heath was a member of Harvard’s Project Liberty team working with elected officials in Central and Eastern Europe and served four years as a member of the Council on Foundations International Committee. She is currently a participant in the Second Century Project, writing about the future of community foundations. Heath has a bachelor of science degree from Eastern Oregon University and a master’s of science degree from the University of Wisconsin.


Marianne Hughes is the founding executive director of the Interaction Institute for Social Change, a nonprofit organization that works for social justice and sustainability. IISC ignites the power of collaboration by building leadership capacity, fostering connectivity and facilitating concerted action. As executive director from 1993-2012, Hughes built strategic alliances and fostered connections among social change agents and organizations, and led the development of new products and initiatives as well as organizational thinking and learning about innovative ways to create high impact social change. Throughout her tenure with IISC and still today, Hughes provides consulting, facilitation, network building, leadership development and training services to movement builders, nonprofits organizations, public sector agencies and cross-sectoral collaborations to help them think strategically and take vision to action.

Kimberley James serves as an evaluation officer in the Learning and Impact unit at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. In this position, James provides leadership and technical assistance in the Foundation’s evaluation-related functions, which includes developing evaluation frameworks; identifying indicators that measure and assess the Foundation’s overall progress and impact; partnering with the Foundation’s programming staff to integrate learning and evaluation activities; and collaborating with external partners to advance practices in philanthropy and the evaluation field.

Casey Johnson is the founding executive director for GreenLight Fund Bay Area, launching GreenLight’s expansion beyond Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area in March 2012. Prior to GreenLight, she completed a fellowship at Room to Read, an international NGO focused on literacy and girls education in developing countries. Johnson’s background is in working with literacy and education-focused nonprofit organizations in California, Massachusetts and Washington, DC, including Raising A Reader, a GreenLight Fund portfolio organization in Boston. Johnson earned master’s degrees in education from the University of San Francisco and in English from Brooklyn College.


Joshua Joseph is an officer in planning & evaluation at The Pew Charitable Trusts. For 15 years, he’s worked with organization leaders and program staff to design distinctive studies, create change models and implement evaluation plans. He also leads logic modeling workshops and facilitates team off-sites to further support learning and build capacity. Before joining Pew in 2012, Josheph was a senior program manager at Partnership for Public Service, focusing on people and performance issues – leadership development, performance management, onboarding – in federal agencies. Past roles include managing BNA’s surveys unit and consulting on business conduct issues at Ethics Resource Center.

Tom Kelly joined the Hawai’i Community Foundation in December 2012 as its new vice president for knowledge, evaluation and learning after 13 years managing evaluation at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. His work includes the building of internal and grantee evaluation and knowledge-building capacity, evaluation of policy advocacy and community capacity and foundation performance and results measurement. He also led the evaluation of Casey’s 12-year, 10-city community change initiative Making Connections. Kelly is a board member of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and the Dr. Barbara J. Sugland Foundation and is a graduate of Harvard College and The George Washington University.

Melody Keim, with deep roots and proven expertise in the community benefit sector, inspires new ways of thinking and brings a thoughtful perspective to investing in local organizations. Her leadership sparked the Ah-Ha Project; Creative Solutions to Real Problems and launched a new approach to the way the Lancaster County Community Foundation engages with its grantee partners. Keim brings over 25 years of for profit and community benefit experience to her work as VP of programs and initiatives. Her latest endeavors include building a cohort learning model into Ah-Ha Funds and initiating an Organizational Fellowship Program for the 2013 grant cycle.


Rebekah Levin is the director of evaluation and learning for the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, guiding the Foundation in evaluating the impact of its philanthropy and involvement in community issues. Levin works with the Foundation’s grantmaking programs, and also with the parks, gardens and museums at Cantigny Park. Levin’s previous positions include research associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was designing and implementing evaluations for foundations and nonprofits and teaching evaluation and research methods; and executive director at the Center for Impact Research in Chicago.

Rafael López is the associate director for talent management and

leadership development of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private charitable organization dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. Prior to joining the Foundation, López served as the president and CEO of The Family League of Baltimore City, Inc. where he also served as a member of the Baltimore City Mayor’s Cabinet. In the past, López has served as the executive director of the City of Los Angeles Commission for Children, Youth and Their Families, deputy director of the City and County of San Francisco Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families, senior deputy for Health and Human Services for Los Angeles County supervisor Gloria Molina and as the founding executive director of First 5 Santa Cruz County where he launched the countywide implementation of the California Children and Families First Act. López is an alumnus of Vassar College and the University of California Santa Cruz where he graduated with honors in American Studies. He is a graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government where he earned a master's degree in public administration.


Michael Maness joined Knight Foundation in 2011. He leads Knight’s Journalism and Media Innovation program. Previously, he was Gannett’s vice president of innovation and design. During his tenure, he led the creation of an innovation process based on human-centered design and launched multiple new brands. He also served as vice president of strategic planning for Gannett's newspaper division, launched several local news sites across the company and developed the industry’s first daily video newscast on the web done without a television partner. In addition, Maness was named to the Newspaper Association of America's list of "20 under 40" and was a co-winner in 2007 of the Chairman's Special Achievement Award at Gannett. Before joining Gannett, Maness was an analyst and media consultant, a campaign manager and a marketing account executive. He is a graduate of Northwestern University. Maness has been a member of Knight Foundation’s journalism advisory committee for the past four years.

Nancy MacPherson joined the Rockefeller Foundation in 2008, as

managing director of evaluation, and is responsible for developing and managing the Foundation-wide evaluation function at strategy, initiative and grant portfolio levels. Previously, MacPherson worked for more than 25 years in development evaluation in Asia and Africa with international development organizations, the United Nations, multilateral and bilateral agencies. Most recently, she set up and managed IUCN’s Program Evaluation and Performance Assessment Systems and served as special advisor to the IUCN director general. She has played key roles in the establishment and nurturing of a number of global and regional development evaluation professional associations, notably, the International Development Evaluation Association, the African Evaluation Association and the South East Asia Community of Practice in Evaluating Climate Change. MacPherson has been a member of the teaching faculty at the World Bank’s International Program for Development Evaluation Training since 2002.

Jessica Mancini is a program officer for the Local Grantmaking

Program at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation with responsibility for grantmaking in Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties and for the Local Program’s evaluation efforts. Prior to working with the Foundation, Mancini worked in the nonprofit sector as a business analyst for small social enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area, most recently for New Foundry Ventures in San Francisco. She has experience in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors through her work as a consultant with Accenture and as a high school teacher in Namibia, where she also managed the construction of a village kindergarten. Mancini holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Cornell University and an MBA with a focus on social enterprise and nonprofit management from the Haas School of Business at the


University of California, Berkeley.

Allison Metz, a developmental psychologist, is associate director of the National Implementation Research Network and scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Metz's work focuses on the implementation of evidence-based and evidence-informed practices. She has expertise in implementation science, organizational and systems change, and coaching. Metz is an editor of the forthcoming volume The Application of Implementation Science to Early Childhood Programs and Systems. She is an invited presenter on topics related to implementation science internationally and works with the Global Implementation Initiative to improve the science and practice of implementation. Metz is currently working with The Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust on their implementation of the Healthy Places North Carolina Initiative.

Veronica Olazabal manages evaluation and learning activities at the MasterCard Foundation. She has more than 15 years of evaluation and research experience in the philanthropic, nonprofit and academic sectors that spans Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America. Prior to joining the Foundation, she spearheaded the monitoring and evaluation efforts of The United Methodists Committee on Relief (UMCOR), as well as co-chaired InterAction's Working Group for Evaluation and Program Effectiveness. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications, a master’s degree in urban policy and planning from Rutgers University and is on her way to acquiring her master’s degree in Anthropology from Columbia University.


Udaya Patnaik is a founder and principal of Jump Associates, a strategy and innovation firm. Jump helps companies create new businesses and reinvent existing ones, and helps government, foundations and nonprofits increase their impact. Patnaik helps clients manage innovation, create and commercialize new businesses, and transform organizations. He uses skills in systems thinking, facilitation and roadmapping to advise executives in technology, healthcare, consumer packaged goods, philanthropy and retail. Over the years, Patnaik has had the privilege of working with leaders at GE, Target, Harley-Davidson and FedEx to solve long term strategy issues while delivering rapid results. He is a frequent speaker on using innovation to drive growth. Prior to Jump, Patnaik worked for a nonprofit community and economic development firm, providing technical assistance in finance, policy and systems improvement. He has taught at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and holds a degree in civil engineering, also from Stanford.

Michael Quinn Patton is an independent organizational development

and evaluation consultant. He is former president of the American Evaluation Association. He is the only recipient of both the Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award from the Evaluation Research Society for "outstanding contributions to evaluation use and practice" and the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for lifetime contributions to evaluation theory from the American Evaluation Association. The Society for Applied Sociology honored him with the 2001 Lester F. Ward Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Sociology. He was the Gwen Iding Brogden Distinguished Lecturer at the 2008 National Conference on Systems of Care Research for Children’s Mental Health. He is the author of five evaluation used in over 500 universities worldwide and has co-authored a book on the dynamics of social innovation with two Canadians drawing on complexity theory and systems thinking: His latest book is Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use (Guilford Press, 2011). After receiving his doctorate in Organizational Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, he spent 18 years on the faculty of the University of Minnesota, including five years as director of the Minnesota Center for Social Research and ten years with the Minnesota Extension Service. He received the University's Morse Amoco Award for outstanding teaching. He also served as a faculty member with the Union Institute & University for 16 years. He has worked with organizations and programs at the international, national, state and local levels, and with philanthropic, not-for-profit, private sector and government programs. He has worked with peoples from many different cultures and perspectives. He is a generalist working across the full range of efforts at improving human effectiveness and results, including programs in leadership


development, education, human services, the environment, public health, employment, agricultural extension, arts, criminal justice, poverty programs, transportation, diversity, managing for results, performance indicators, effective governance and futuring. He uses a variety of evaluation and research methods, with special focus on mixed methods designs and analysis.

Debra Pérez is the assistant vice president for research and evaluation, at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Among other priorities, Pérez is responsible for supporting advancing the unit’s goals of learning and spreading the Foundation’s lessons from our past and current investments. She received her bachelor's degree from Douglass College, a master’s degree from University of Kent and a master's degree in public administration from Baruch College. She completed her interfaculty doctoral program at Harvard University, receiving a PhD in health policy. She was the recipient of W.K. Kellogg Foundation Scholar’s in Health Policy program and a National Urban and Rural Fellow.

Hallie Preskill, PhD, is a managing director with FSG, where she

oversees the firm’s Strategic Learning & Evaluation practice and advises on a wide variety of evaluation and learning projects with foundations, nonprofits, corporations, and government organizations. Prior to joining FSG, Preskill spent more than 20 years in academia, teaching courses in program evaluation, training design and development, organizational learning, appreciative inquiry and consulting. Preskill’s books include Becoming the Change, Reframing Evaluation through Appreciative Inquiry, Building Evaluation Capacity: 72 Activities for Teaching and Training, Evaluation Strategies for Communicating and Reporting, and Evaluation in Organizations. Preskill was the 2007 president of the American Evaluation Association. She received the American Evaluation Association's Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Outstanding Professional Practice in 2002 and the University of Illinois Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004. Preskill holds a PhD from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


Kevin Rafter as manager, research and evaluation at the James Irvine Foundation, Rafter works with program teams to develop evaluation and research projects that enable us to learn from our work, refine our strategies and demonstrate the impact of promising approaches. He also works with the communications team to communicate findings and leads annual foundation-wide assessments. Prior to joining Irvine, Rafter conducted research on the nonprofit sector at the University of San Francisco. Rafter has a doctoral degree from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He serves on the advisory board of the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

Ehren Reed as the research and evaluation officer for the Skoll Foundation, Reed is responsible for assessing the impact and effectiveness of the foundation’s efforts and supporting ongoing learning and decision making. He was previously a director at Innovation Network, an evaluation consulting firm. He brings over ten years of experience managing evaluation projects in the fields of human services, human rights, and advocacy. He speaks frequently on emerging trends in evaluation and has presented at many conferences, including Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and the American Evaluation Association. Reed earned bachelor’s degree and master’s of science degrees in education from the University of Connecticut.

Jonathan Sotsky serves as the director of strategy & assessment at John S. or James L. Knight Foundation. He manages evaluation and learning initiatives that inform the foundation’s programs in media innovation, community engagement and the arts. Sotsky previously worked as a consultant at Mission Measurement, where he partnered with funders and nonprofits to develop performance measurement systems to analyze their social impact. Before that, Sotsky was a financial management consultant in the media practice at IBM. He serves on the board of Media Impact Funders and graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in applied economics.


Rosanna Tran is an evaluation officer at the California HealthCare Foundation, where she partners with staff to document the impact of program work and leads organizational learning efforts to improve the Foundation's grantmaking. Prior to joining the Foundation, Tran designed and implemented evaluations for domestic violence and problem-gambling interventions. Her previous experience includes work in HIV prevention and care, language access, and cultural competence at AIDS Services in Asian Communities in Philadelphia. Tran earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley.

Wayan Vota is a technology expert focused on using appropriate information and communication technologies to accelerate social and economic advancement in the developing world. He is the communications manager at Development Gateway, and the co-founder of Technology Salon, Kurante, ICTworks, Educational Technology Debate and OLPC News. He is a Tech Museum Laureate, Global Social Business Incubator Alumni, DevEx International Development Leader and advises the World Bank, Souktel and VSO International.

Suzanne Walsh is a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda

Gates Foundation where she leads the Foundation’s institutional redesign strategies. Before joining Gates, Walsh worked at two other foundations: The Lumina Foundation for Education in Indianapolis where she managed the Making Opportunity Affordable initiative, which was aimed at increasing college productivity by bringing about fundamental change in the way higher education does business; and The Heinz Endowments in Pittsburgh where her diverse portfolio included community colleges, universities, workforce development, tech commercialization and transfer, city/county consolidation, immigration and regional economic development. She got her start in community college work as the coordinator of special projects at Cuyahoga Community College. Walsh has her juris doctorate and master's degree in social work from Case Western Reserve University, a bachelor’s of science degree from Cornell University and an associate’s degree in applied science from Hudson Valley Community College. She is a member of the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations board and


on the advisory boards for Roadtrip Nation, as well as education start-ups Uncollege and Sokanu. She is also a proud judge for Dance Your PhD.

Dan Wilson is a credentialed evaluator and the manager of policy, research and evaluation with the Ontario Trillium Foundation. His team also leads the Foundation’s Knowledge Management and learning strategy. Wilson is especially interested in Developmental Evaluation and evaluation that makes a difference. Wilson’s background includes community development, capacity building and health promotion. He has also spent some time as a program manager with the Foundation. An avid music lover, Wilson sings in a choir that performs world folk music in its original language. He has recently learned to play the bagpipes, much to the chagrin of his neighbors.

Connie Yowell oversees a $85 million program on Digital Media and

Learning, one of the first philanthropic efforts in the country to systematically explore the impact of digital media on young people and implications for the future of learning. Prior to joining the Foundation, Yowell was an associate professor at the University of Illinois, publishing scholarly work that examined the complex interplay among young people’s emerging identity, their social context and achievement. Her research integrated the fields of adolescent psychological development and organization change to address the problem of high school dropout among immigrant students in the United States. Yowell briefly served as policy analyst in the U.S. Department of Education during the Clinton Administration, and has worked closely with teachers and administrators to develop and implement literacy curricula for Latino youth and as evaluator and program coordinator for youth development programs in New York City. Yowell received the Distinguished Fellows Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, under which she worked with the National Writing Project to develop approaches that integrate web 2.0 technologies into the social practices of teachers. Yowell earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale, and her PhD from Stanford University.


Andrew Zolli is an acclaimed leader in the fields of global foresight, social innovation and resilience. He serves as curator and executive director of PopTech (poptech.org), a global innovation network which brings together scientists, technologists, engineers, designers, business leaders, social entrepreneurs, ecologists and others to collaborate on new approaches to the world’s toughest challenges. Under his leadership, PopTech has incubated breakthrough collaborative innovations in mobile healthcare, education, sustainability and a number of related fields. It has also identified and trained dozens of the world’s leading social innovators and scientists; and its annual thought-leadership conferences have become one of the most recognized and influential in the world. Zolli has served as a Fellow of the National Geographic Society, and his work and ideas regularly appear in dozens of leading publications and media outlets. In July 2012, Zolli's next book, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, will be published by Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster.

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