Congratulations to the 2024 AEA Awards recipients for their achievements, dedication, and contributions to the field of evaluation!
Dr. Lyssa Wilson Becho (she/her) is an evaluation scholar practitioner. She works as a Principal Research Associate at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University. Dr. Becho directs an evaluation capacity building initiative (EvaluATE) funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, focusing on developing capacity in evaluation practice and use for both evaluation practitioners and consumers. Through EvaluATE, she develops open-access resources and training that help users translate evaluation theory into practice. Her scholarship focuses on bridging evaluation theory to practice and making approaches to evaluation accessible. She has a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary evaluation and experience evaluating local, state-, and nation-wide projects. Dr. Becho also serves as the Co-Executive Editor of the Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation and co-editor of the forthcoming book Core Concepts in Evaluation: Classic Writings and Contemporary Commentary.
Jara Dean-Coffey likes wordplay, asking questions to dismantle oppressive orthodoxies and advocating for nuance in all projects, partnerships and power dynamics she is part of. As a consultant she invites leaders and their organizations/efforts to become their truest, most radical expressions of themselves and stands in her wholeness in all spaces. From her curiosity and ability to bring ideas to fruition, she is CEO of jdcPARTNERSHIPS, the Founder of the Equitable Evaluation Initiative and the Lead Facilitator of Luminare Group. Through this constellation of entities, she develops new approaches, sparks conversation and advises on efforts - all in service of our collective liberation. Jara is on the boards of Equity in the Center, Collective Change Lab and New Directions in Evaluation and is an Advisor to the Fellowship for Liberated Futures.
Julia Coffman (she/her) is founder and executive director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation (CEI), a field-building nonprofit that partners with philanthropy and other evaluators to provide changemakers the space and resources needed to advance racial justice and create an equitable future. For the last 30 years, Julia has worked with foundations on their approaches to strategy, evaluation, and learning, leading dozens of evaluations designed to support and help advance social change. She has expertise in evaluating complex systems change and has been a leader in building the policy and advocacy evaluation field, supporting field collaboration, developing new methods and approaches, and supporting other evaluators in sharing their unique contributions. For the last 12 years, Julia has also been a leader of the Evaluation Roundtable, a network of foundation learning and evaluation leaders in over 150 foundations across the U.S. and Canada. The Evaluation Roundtable offers peer learning opportunities that push participants’ thinking on evaluation, hone their professional judgment, and help them to navigate the challenges they face as organizational leaders. As part of this work, she has helped to produce teaching cases that offer in-depth stories of foundation experiences and challenges with evaluation and put readers in the role of decision-makers as the cases unfold. Her evaluation work has been featured in three of these cases, allowing other practitioners to learn from her practice—both what worked and what did not. For 15 years prior to founding CEI, Julia led evaluation efforts at the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), a research and evaluation organization at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Julia led the organization’s evaluation work, and was an editor of The Evaluation Exchange, a nationally renowned periodical on emerging trends and issues in evaluation.
Dr. Leah Neubauer is an Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She is Affiliated Faculty with the Institute for Global Health and the Program of African Studies (PAS) and Ad-Hoc Faculty in The Graduate School. She serves as Associate Director in the Program for Public Health (PHP) and Director of Educational Advancement and Accreditation. As a collaborative team scientist and thought partner, her primary area of scholarship is focused on curricular design, decision-making, educator development, evaluation & corresponding programming and policies in the health-related professions and sciences. She teaches courses in global health, public health and evaluation. Neubauer is a proud alumni of federal TRiO programming and the Ronald E. McNair Scholars program. She loves working with colleagues across the globe and spending time with her big family. Her work honors the living legacies of her first teachers, her mother and grandmother.
William Trochim is Professor Emeritus of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University and Professor of Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical. For 15 years he was the Director of the Cornell Office for Research on Evaluation and, until 2020, was for 13 years the Director of Evaluation for the Weill Cornell Clinical and Translational Science Center. His research focuses on the development and field testing of evaluation and research methods and their use in managing and assessing programs and organizations in virtually any field of practice. He has developed a number of methodologies that are widely used in the behavioral, social and biomedical sciences, including the regression-discontinuity design, concept mapping (an integration of group engagement techniques with multivariate methods like multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis), and evolutionary evaluation approaches like the Systems Evaluation Protocol. In his work with the NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Awards initiative, Prof. Trochim co-led the National Evaluators Group and was a lead member of the Common Metrics Executive Team. In other NIH work, he helped develop evaluation systems for the HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Networks of the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and he was a Visiting Scientist at the National Cancer Institute. He is the developer of two widely used computer platforms: The Concept System for accomplishing conceptual mapping, and The Netway for planning, implementing and utilizing evaluations of programs and interventions. Prof. Trochim has taught evaluation and research methods at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at Cornell since 1980. He has published widely in the areas of applied research methods and evaluation including the books: Research Design for Program Evaluation: The Regression-Discontinuity Approach (1984), Concept Mapping for Planning and Evaluation (2005), Research Methods: The Concise Knowledge Base (2005), the Research Methods Knowledge Base (2007), and Research Methods: The Essential Knowledgebase (2016). Dr. Trochim served for four years on the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) Board of Directors and a term as President of AEA (2007-2009).
Dr. Hanh Cao Yu is the Editor-in-Chief of The Foundation Review, Special Issues and the new Executive Director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation. From 2016 to 2023, she served as the Chief Learning Officer at The California Endowment (TCE) where she oversaw learning, strategic development, evaluation, and impact activities, and ensured that local and state grantees, board and staff understood the results and lessons of the Foundation’s investments in its 10-year Building Healthy Communities (BHC) initiative. BHC focused on social determinants of health, policy systems change through a community-driven, power building approach. Dr. Yu’s career spans three decades in the research, evaluation, and philanthropic sectors. Prior to joining TCE, she was Vice President at Social Policy Research Associates. Dr. Yu has expertise in culturally responsive, equitable evaluation, in the areas of health and racial equity, social change philanthropy, leadership development, organizational effectiveness, policy advocacy evaluation, community organizing, movement building, and vulnerable populations. As a researcher at Stanford University, Dr. Yu authored numerous publications, including Adolescent World: Navigating the Multiple Worlds of Family, Peers, and School (Teachers’ College Press, 1998). She also contributed to The Handbook on Leadership Development Evaluation (Jossey-Bass, 2006), Her recent writings can be found in the Stanford Social Innovation Review Philanthropic Investment in Power and Building People Power Series. Dr. Yu is a national leader in philanthropy, research, learning & evaluation and have served on the Board of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, the National Academy of Science Roundtable on Population Health Improvement, Partnership for Advancing Health Equity, the Emergent Learning Community Advisory Board, and an ambassador for the Trust-based Philanthropy Project.
Dr. Melvin M. Mark is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Penn State, where he was also department head. He has conducted RoE on a variety of topics, including: the consequences of content (in)validity; techniques for facilitating deliberation among interested parties with different power or attitudes; the effects of participatory evaluation methods on third parties’ perceptions of an evaluation; and adaptation planning. Several of his publications have advocated for and discussed issues related to RoE. This includes a 2008 chapter presenting a framework of different foci of and approaches to evaluation – and which, to Mel’s surprise, continues to have a role in recent conceptual work and teaching about RoE. Additionally, Mel is a member of the Oral History of Evaluation team. Mel has also served AEA in a number of roles, including as Board member, President, and Editor of AJE.