I’m Taj Carson, founder and CEO of Inciter (formerly Carson Research Consulting). In the early days of conducting evaluations, I realized I was inadvertently gatekeeping a valuable asset by collecting and storing data in a way that only I could get to. Over time, I heard from many organizations that they wanted more – more access to their data, and more ?exibility to use their data to construct stories for a wider range of audiences. Although the standard, PDF format reports often take up the bulk of an evaluation budget, I don’t believe they provide the bulk of the value. For instance, clients may wish to explore evaluation data sets to inform programmatic decision-making, re?ect on progress, and share feedback with constituents long after the funder receives their report. Too often the resources spent on study design, data collection, analysis, and reporting did not usefully live on after the reporting stage.

Hello, AEA365 community. My name is Dorothy Lucks, an inaugural member of EVALSDGs, a credentialed evaluator, a Fellow of the Australian Evaluation Society and, more importantly, an individual committed to embedding the global-local sustainable development goals (SDGs) in every evaluation that I am involved with. This blog summarizes key ways that all evaluators can get involved in evaluations that can contribute to sustainable change.

Hello! I am Kavita Mittapalli, Ph.D. I own a K-16 research and evaluation firm, MN Associates, Inc. (MNA) just outside Washington DC metropolitan area. I founded MNA in 2004 as a graduate student at George Mason University. I have a Ph.D. in Research Design and Methodology in Education. We are a team of five evaluators and an administrative staff with a combined 65 years of experience conducting a wide variety of social science and STEM education research and evaluation projects across the country.

Hi, I’m Kim Norris, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Director for American Institutes for Research (AIR)’s International Development Division. Part of my role is to lead a MEL practice. As part of our initial strategy, our practice team determined to focus on localizing our work. For us this means we seek out ways to increase local partnering and leadership in and around MEL efforts – from business development to MEL direction and execution. This involves local team leadership, capacity strengthening and engagement on local terms.