Friday, March 25, 2022

A Letter From the President

From President Veronica Olazabal 

“It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.” — Mary Oliver

Who’s excited for Spring?

I know I am, and not only for the longer daylight hours and the milder weather but also because it is that time of the year when we submit our AEA Conference Proposals! Did you miss the announcement? Fear not, you have until April 22 to submit a proposal.

Below are a few quick tips to consider as you start reaching out to your evaluator friends and colleagues to plan for Evaluation 2022 . Successful proposals usually:

1. Connect directly to the conference theme. Please ensure you consider this year’s theme, (re) shaping evaluation together.
2. Surface different perspectives and learning on a particular issue. The key here is to broaden our thinking on a particular issue, beyond the results of a singular project, program or organization.
3. Set aside time to complete your proposal. We understand that this can be difficult, so we encourage you to start working on your sessions now, even if all of your speakers are not confirmed. If you are accepted, several of the details (with the main exception of the abstract) can be modified.

I am also thrilled to be working closely with colleagues Ayesha Boyce, Tom Archibald, Shawna Hoffman and many others to plan the Presidential Strand activities. We have engaged a range of evaluators and are practicing a decentralized decision-making structure to deliver an inclusive and equitable Presidential Strand experience, leaning into our AEA values.

We are also very excited to be working with the Gulf Coast Evaluation Network, our New Orleans Local Affiliate, to plan for our first return to an in-person conference this year! The Local Affiliates are professional development groups dedicated to supporting evaluators in local communities. Learn more about them here. 

Finally, while there are a number of announcements and resources in this month's newsletter, we should acknowledge that our evaluation colleagues and friends in the Ukraine Evaluation Association and Evaluation Russia are experiencing unprecedented disruption and violence. Please keep them in your thoughts over the next few weeks and months.

Walking the Talk: Laurie Jones Neighbors

Laurie Jones Neighbors, Founder and Managing Consultant, Cities & People Advisors

Visitors to San Francisco are often perplexed by our rail transportation map, which gives the impression that our “system” is basically a half dozen heavy and light rail lines that run in parallel fashion along the same short route through downtown. Look at, say, Berlin’s subway map, with its 173 stations, and you’ve got a better sense of my route to a career as an evaluator.

A simple narrative of my career often comes off as disjointed. This is because I’m trying to squeeze the decisions I have made, the experiences I have learned from, and the values I have followed, into a pathway model that just doesn’t fit me. Nevertheless, here are the basics.

I was born in Texas to a home for unwed mothers in the mid-1960s. I was my mother’s middle child, and, while she chose to raise my older and younger brothers, the stigma associated with my presence was not something she could bear. I was adopted by a couple who could not have a second child for medical reasons. Once I was placed in her home, my adoptive mother had a difficult time attaching to me, and never quite did, but it would have been unthinkable for her to admit it soon enough to stop the adoption, and so when the year of fostering ended, she and my adoptive father made our relationship official. Like many people adopted in such circumstances (and like many people living in the margins generally), I instinctively knew that though the story I was living was a fictional one, I had no choice but to go along, and every time I tried to push back against the system (which I did with increasing frequency), the impact was strongly negative.

That’s a lot to share, I know. Especially for a professional column. But I don’t think it’s honest to tell you that I came to my relationship with the AEA principles purely from my experiences as a college instructor of composition and critical thinking; as someone with advanced degrees in Rhetoric and Sociology; or as someone who worked for a racial and economic justice nonprofit and then went back to teaching college, this time in public health; or even by all of the times I hired an evaluator, fired an evaluator or – increasingly – stepped in as the program or project evaluator.

Like the Berlin transit map, it’s complicated, but maybe not as complicated as it looks. I try to walk the talk of the AEA principles because they are, in fact, very much the same as the principles that I have developed over my lifetime – principles significantly shaped by a life lived mostly in the margin, with a narrative shaped by the forces of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism. Lucky for me, I came across a professional organization that is striving so hard to achieve the same things I want to achieve. That’s why I walk the talk. So, how do I do it? As many ways as possible, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll pick one example.

Since transitioning from being an independent consultant to a founder and managing consultant of my own small firm, Cities & People Advisors, I am constantly working to ensure that our project team members are racially diverse. And let’s be honest – doing so is no sacrifice; nor is it altruistic. By providing opportunities for early-career Black, Indigenous, and people of color researchers and evaluators to take a leadership role in our work, I am also giving myself the opportunity to grow and stretch in hard and wonderful ways. What’s more, I’m giving some of our clients the opportunity to grow and stretch as well.

For me, initiating these relationships has been the easy part. Building my capacity to be a true partner within the treacherous waters of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism/nationalism, however, requires my constant attention. Even more challenging is maintaining a commitment to constantly checking my assumptions and practices about fair pay, emotional labor, professional access, social capital and other forms of power and transactional exchange, especially when it comes to working with people who have often been pushed to the margins to maintain white power. I draw on my own experiences frequently. While I know they are not identical, they are informative and help me make good decisions.

To me, there’s no goal more ethical than working on behalf of the public good, and there is no “public” when some hold power and some are barred from such power. How do I open the doors for others? Or better yet, how do I rip that door right off the hinges, maybe even tear out the whole wall? The wording is a little different, but that’s how I interpret what we say we are standing for as an association and where I put my effort in walking the talk.

Sign up for upcoming sessions in our Digital Knowledge Hub! Explore the upcoming sessions below. Spots are limited, so register now for one of the following spots:

• Systems Thinking and Systems Evaluation Theory: Practice and Implementation – Starting April 6
• Data Analysis and Cleansing in Alteryx – Starting April 6
• Data Visualization and Data Storytelling Best Practices using RAWGraphs and Figma – Starting May 5

New Jobs & RFPs from AEA's Career Center

What's new this month in the AEA Online Career Center? The following positions have been added recently: 

• Evaluator (Lac du Flambeau, WI)

• Associate Investigator/Evaluation (Aurora, CO)

• Evaluation Director (Washington, DC)

Explore the Online Career Center

Thank You, AEA Lonstanding Members!

AEA would like to recognize and thank some of its most longstanding members. Click here to view individuals who are celebrating 5+, 10+, 20+, and 30+ years with the association this month!

Welcome to Our New Members!

AEA would like to welcome those who have recently joined the association. Click here to view a list of AEA's newest members.