Hi. I am David Fetterman. I am the president of Fetterman & Associates, an international evaluation firm. I am also a past-president of the American Evaluation Association and a co-chair of the Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation TIG. I am the founder of empowerment evaluation and I see some parallels between empowerment evaluation and the artificial intelligence tool ChapGPT.
Hi I’m Kim Sabo Flores, CEO and co-founder of Hello Insight, an online learning and evaluation platform that supports thousands of youth-serving nonprofits across the country to continuously learn and improve their work with data and insights from young people. And I’m Andrea Juarez Mendoza, a participatory researcher with twenty years of experience engaging youth in social justice inquiry and action.
I am Liliana Rodríguez-Campos, Co-Chair of the Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation TIG. I bring expertise as an evaluation professor and the director of the Graduate Certificate in Evaluation at the University of South Florida.
Hi, I’m Quisha Brown, co-founder of Humanistic Care, LLC, an organization offering culturally responsive solutions to tough challenges faced by nonprofits serving marginalized people. I’m also the creator of the Progressive Outcomes Scale Logic Model (POSLM) which provides a culturally responsive approach to logic modeling. This blog post discusses AEA’s 2023 Conference Theme, “The Power of Story ” and my hopes for what information this conference will provide.
My name is Donna M. Mertens and I am an independent consultant based in Washington DC; my work is both domestic and international. I had the honor of being the keynote speaker at the Minnesota Evaluation Studies Institute (MESI) in March 2015. The MESI theme was Social Justice amidst Standards and Accountability: The Challenge for Evaluation. The concept of social justice in the context of evaluation implies that evaluators can play a role in addressing those wicked problems that persist in society, such as violence, lack of access to quality education for all, poverty, substance abuse, and environmental pollution.
I am Leah Christina Neubauer, Associate Professor, CREA Faculty Affiliate, and Chicagoland Evaluation Affiliate member. I am deeply humbled to contribute to a week honoring the great Professor, Dr. Stafford L. Hood. I’ve been challenged to put my deep reflections in writing. I welcome your understanding and interest as I share out some of it all.
My name is Karen Kirkhart, Professor Emerita at the School of Social Work at Syracuse University and an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Stafford Hood was a treasured friend who anchored me personally, professionally, and intellectually. He was genuine to the core. Personally, my strongest image of Stafford is his powerful presence, his bear hugs, his welcoming greetings, and his love of music, a great meal, and black Labs. He was always good company! And Stafford schooled me. His early writings and his historical project, Nobody Knows My Name, introduced me to Black scholars I had not previously heard of. But he also schooled me on jazz, gumbo, Omega Psi Phi, and the cultural significance of the Chicago Cubs vs. the White Sox!
Greetings from Vidhya Shanker, originator of #WhyIsEvaluationSoWhite? and convener of #TheMay13Group. I’m humbled and honored to share how Dr. Stafford Hood’s work is pivotal to understand the origins of evaluation’s demographic, ideological, and epistemological whiteness.
Hi, I’m Dominica McBride, Founder of BECOME and a past student and long-time mentee and co-
conspirator of Stafford Hood. While ineffable, the following words represent just the surface of the depth of influence Stafford Hood had on my life, using my life as just one example of the many lives and minds he shaped.
My name is Ayesha Boyce. I am an associate professor of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University (ASU) and co-lead the STEM Program Evaluation Laboratory. Others within this week have done a beautiful job of highlighting some of Dr. Hood ‘s amazing contributions to our field. So, in my post, I reflect on my first meeting with him and some professional lessons I have learned from him. I met Dr. Hood at a pivotal point in my burgeoning career. I was just 25 years old and working for the Arizona Department of Education (ADOE). My supervisor and colleagues suggested I seek out Dr. Hood to inquire about a PhD program at ASU. I walked into his office at ASU and there were books in stacks on the floor, along the wall, and on his desk. Moving boxes were strewn across the room. Here is my vivid recollection of that meeting.
