Welcome!

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About Me

I started my career in the classroom — middle school, specifically. It's where I learned that good intentions aren't enough, and that understanding whether something is actually working requires more than gut instinct. It also taught me that the people closest to the work are rarely the ones designing the systems meant to measure it.

 

From there, I spent many years at UCLA's CRESST, earning a Ph.D. in education with a focus on assessment and measurement and helping design assessments, conduct research, and study how programs contribute to meaningful outcomes.

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What it didn't prepare me for was the gap I kept running into afterward — working in schools, then in nonprofits, then alongside organizations of all kinds. The frameworks from the research world were sound. The methods worked. But they were almost never translated into something a stretched-thin program director could actually use. Organizations were doing meaningful work and struggling to show it — not because they didn't care about data, but because the tools available were either too complex, too expensive, or too generic to be useful.

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That gap is what this site is built around.

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Today, I support organizations through a combination of consulting, practical tools, and free resources designed to make evaluation more accessible.

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My Approach

I believe good outcome measurement shouldn't require a specialist, a large budget, or a system so complex it never gets used. It should be something your team can run, understand, and learn from — starting simple, and growing as your program does.

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I also believe program data should serve more than one purpose. The information that helps your team make better decisions week to week should be the same information you bring to funders and boards. A good measurement system does both — and that's what makes it worth sustaining.

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My background is in education, so the tools here are built primarily for youth-serving programs. But the underlying measurement principles apply broadly. If you run a community program, family initiative, or health education program, you'll find plenty that transfers.

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A Note on What This Is

What I help organizations build isn't research for research's sake. It's practical measurement systems that provide credible information without creating unnecessary burden. The goal isn't to replicate a university research study. It's to gather meaningful information that helps programs learn, improve, and communicate their impact with confidence.

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If you have questions, want to work together, or just want to say hello, my inbox is always open.

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— Rebecca 

rebecca@evaluationtoolkits.com

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View my full professional background on LinkedIn

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I rely on word of mouth — if these tools have been useful to you, sharing them with a colleague means more than you might think.

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Picture credit to my 11 year old.