Meet Our Team
Michelle Burd PhD
A social scientist by training, I cut my teeth on evaluating districtwide change to make math accessible and meaningful to children and youth. Students, teachers, principals, families, district administrators, school board members, all were impacted. I dug deep into the workings of schools, teams of teachers, leadership to understand what made the difference between success and falling short. That project cemented my approach. I hone in on systems, how the parts of organizations are interrelated, work together, and impact lives.
Many, many projects later, engaging with people and their contexts is at the center of my practice. I ask leaders questions about the students they teach and the culture of the workplace to solidify a project vision. I listen to young people in bilingual biology class to find out how their experiences sync up with the leaders’ vision…or not. I tune in to their lives, history, culture, struggles, joys, and how they experience the world. My insights from data sync up the vision with observations, to help stakeholders make program improvements, planned and unexpected.
Liz Johnson, EdD
I’ve worked within K-12 and higher education systems for over 25 years. As a teacher, researcher, and evaluator I know what sparks, drives, and kills sustainable change. I have first-hand experience enacting classroom curriculum level innovations and stewarding community-based collaborations with the power to touch and transform student lives.
Since I can remember, I’ve lived with an awareness of the inequitable distribution of resources. This awareness propelled my early decision to become a teacher, later research into ways white teachers and youth of color negotiate learning identities, and community-based university teaching projects. Today, these lenses and experiences translate into culturally responsive evaluation practices. This means I center diverse (race, class, language, socio-economic status, genders) stakeholder knowledge and needs across the evaluation process. Together, we collaborate on evaluative criteria, collect meaningful data, and deliver nuanced reports clients can use to positively impact lives and revise systems that will sustain them.
Who we are not
We are not a novice team finding our way. We are experienced, knowledgeable experts. We are not a turnkey firm looking to force your project into a fixed set of steps. We apply our expertise and adapt to your context. We know how to structure our work with you. We listen, we collaborate, we adapt.