AEA365 contributor, Curated by Elizabeth Grim

My name is Evan Seidner, and I am the Washington Evaluators’ Program Committee Chair and Scholarship Coordinator.

I’ve been an evaluator my entire life; but it took me until my final year of grad school to figure that out for myself. I was getting my master’s degree in international relations because it felt like the logical next step as I wanted to “course correct” back into a career in security studies. My first real job after receiving my BA was in Tokyo doing procurement and financials for a Japanese grain company because I had the language skills and the willingness to hop on a flight at any moment. While working there I traveled to meet clients across Japan and the US and other countries across Asia.

Hi, I’m Sana Ahmed Wilder. One of the nice things about being a public school teacher was the finality of the school year. The last day would arrive, gradebooks would close a few days later, and I would lock my door and walk away from the classroom for a few, short months.

Hi there! I am Elizabeth Botkin, a member of the Washington Evaluators affiliate and a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist at the U.S. Department of State (DoS). I want to tell you a story about how I became an evaluator to hopefully normalize the twisty turny paths a lot of evaluators take.

Hi, I’m Joanna Prout! I do research and program evaluation, however I started my career as a therapist and psychologist. I spent years watching clients struggle to get effective and accessible treatment and support. Seeing these struggles showed me our need to get information to make services more accessible and effective, so I pursued a career in research.

I’m Amy Kracker Selzer, and I’m a Senior MEL Specialist working with USAID. I’ve worked in international development research for many years. Through that work, I’ve found that while some qualitative data collection participants embrace the opportunity to share their perspectives and tell their stories, for others, sharing the depth of information that makes for rich qualitative work doesn’t come as naturally. In these instances, I’ve found maps to be a particularly useful tool to help people organize their thoughts about a topic and generate conversation, especially when collecting data about community evolution and change.

My name is Esther Nolton, and I am the Immediate Past President for Washington Evaluators. Like many of us in the field, I identify as an “accidental evaluator”—a person who stumbled upon evaluation and stuck around. As I reflect on my journey to and through evaluation, I am amazed by how intentional and logical my path has actually been. I hope my story provides an example of the fascinating ways in which people become evaluators.

Hi! I’m Natalie Donahue. I work in the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ Monitoring Evaluation Learning and Innovation (MELI) Unit and am proud to be this year’s Washington Evaluators President.