OL-ECB TIG Week: Equity-Centered Organizational Learning: Keeping Equity and Inclusion at the Heart of Evaluation by Courtney Long

Date: Saturday, April 19, 2025

Hi! I’m Courtney Long, a director of program development and innovation at UPMC Health Plan. I support the Quality Improvement department in building infrastructure for organizational learning and using evaluative thinking to accelerate improvement.

In recent years, there has been meaningful progress in integrating equity and inclusion into organizational learning and evaluation. However, in today’s political climate, these gains are under threat. Across the country, we’re seeing efforts to roll back progress in racial and social equity. For evaluators and leaders committed to justice, this moment demands a renewed commitment to embedding equity-centered learning into our work. Now more than ever, it is essential to ensure that vulnerable communities remain central to decision-making, resource allocation, and program improvement.

The Role of Equity in Organizational Learning

Equity-centered organizational learning goes beyond traditional evaluation frameworks by addressing systemic disparities. This involves:

• Examining Power Dynamics: Who makes decisions, and whose voices are centered or silenced?
• Disaggregating Data: Moving beyond broad trends to see how different populations are affected.
• Prioritizing Lived Experience: Centering those most impacted in evaluation and decisions.
• Committing to Actionable Change: Using insights to dismantle inequities and improve access for marginalized groups.

The Current Landscape: Challenges and Backlash Against Equity Efforts

Despite clear benefits, equity-focused work is facing increased resistance—from policy restrictions limiting discussions of race and gender to defunding of justice-driven initiatives. This backlash threatens the progress made in centering equity across sectors like healthcare, education, and community development.

This is a critical moment for evaluators and leaders. If equity is to remain a core value, learning and evaluation processes must actively resist the erasure of marginalized voices and reinforce the necessity of justice-oriented approaches.

Hot Tips

1. Use Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE) Approaches. CREE embeds cultural context and equity in evaluation. Key practices include:

• Partnering with communities in designing and conducting evaluations.
• Addressing historical and systemic inequities that shape outcomes.
• Using mixed methods that elevate qualitative insights and lived experience.

2. Protect and Amplify Marginalized Voices. As equity discussions face political suppression, organizations must create intentional space for marginalized communities to speak and lead. This includes:

• Hosting listening sessions that center community narratives.
• Using participatory evaluation, where impacted individuals co-lead data collection and analysis.
• Leveraging findings to advocate for equity-focused policy and practice.

3. Commit to Transparency and Accountability. Equity-centered learning demands openness and follow-through. To ensure this:

• Set measurable equity goals and track progress publicly.
• Share findings with the communities most affected.
• Hold leaders accountable for acting on insights to drive systemic change.

4. Reframe Resistance as an Opportunity for Deeper Engagement. Rather than retreating in the face of backlash, organizations can use this time to:

• Sharpen their messaging around the importance of equity.
• Build cross-sector partnerships to reinforce inclusive evaluation.
• Educate stakeholders on how equity-centered learning benefits entire communities.

Moving Forward: Holding the Line on Equity

This is not the time to scale back on equity and inclusion. Evaluators have a powerful role in keeping learning justice-oriented, data transparent, and marginalized voices heard. By embedding equity in every step of evaluation and organizational learning, we build resilient institutions committed to long-term social change.

In the face of political and social uncertainty, let us use evaluation not just to track progress, but to protect it. Let it be our tool for resisting regression, reinforcing progress, and shaping a more just and equitable future.

Rad Resource

Using Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation Approaches in Postsecondary Research and Evaluation

The American Evaluation Association is hosting Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building (OL-ECB) Topical Interest Group Week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our OL-ECB TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.