Board of Directors

2022 Board of Directors & Leadership

Esther C. Nolton, PhD

President

Esther C. Nolton, PhD, MEd (she/her) has over a decade of experience in research and evaluation. She is currently a Program Officer at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute where she primarily focuses on designing, implementing, and managing strategies for organizational learning, evaluation, capacity building, data governance, and diversity, equity and inclusion. Her PhD is in Research and Evaluation Methods from George Mason University, and she holds a Certificate in Strategic Management from Georgetown University, a Certificate in Leading Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from Northwestern University, and a Certificate in Data Strategy from the UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business. Nolton also brings nearly two decades of experience serving professional organizations. She has sat on over two dozen committees (chaired several of them), held various leadership positions, and served on multiple Boards of Directors. 

Nolton has enthusiastically served the evaluation field and community with unwavering loyalty and dedication. In only four years since officially calling herself a professional evaluator, Nolton served as a member of the Washington Evaluators (WE) Membership Committee (2019 to 2021), Member of the WE Anti-Racism Taskforce (2020), Chair of the WE Program Committee (2021), Mentor for WE Mentor Minutes Program (2020-Present), and was the 2020 recipient of the WE Volunteer of the Year Award. She has also been a member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Website Committee (2020 to 2021), Program Chair (2019 to 2022) for the AEA Evaluation Policy Topical Interest Group (TIG), Chair of the AEA Research on Evaluation TIG (2022 to Present),  member of the AEA DEI Working Group (2021 to Present), member of the Member Engagement Survey Working Group (2021 to Present), and member of the Local Affiliate Collaborative (2021 to Present). After a tremendous year as Program Chair, Nolton is thrilled to now be serving as WE President in 2022.

Beeta Tahmassebi is the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at EnCompass LLC. In addition to running The EnCompass Learning Center (ELC), a globally recognized evaluation and development training center, she oversees EnCompass’ Knowledge Management and Communications team, and manages evaluations and capacity-strengthening projects around the world.

Ms. Tahmassebi has had the privilege of working as an evaluator across a wide range of client systems and organizations, from groups such as Save the Children and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to government agencies such as USAID, the State Department, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, UN Women, and the World Food Programme. Ms. Tahmassebi holds a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. In addition to her work with Washington Evaluators, Ms. Tahmassebi is a frequent presenter at American Evaluation Association conferences, and a member of the SIKM Leaders Community.

Natalie Donahue

President-Elect

Natalie Donahue is currently the Chief of Evaluation in the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) where she directs the monitoring and evaluation of educational and exchange programming.  She also serves as an adjunct at American University in the School of International Service.  Previously, Natalie served as a Senior M&E Specialist for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs' Assistance Coordination Office (NEA/AC), where she was responsible for advising staff and grantees on program design and monitoring activities, designing and managing evaluations, and leading capacity-building efforts within the Bureau. Prior to joining the Department of State, she served as DevTech Systems, Inc’s Director of Business Development, where she provided technical assistance on various Department of State M&E-related projects.  A proud Columbus, Ohio native, Natalie has a Master's in Public Administration and a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Marketing – both from The Ohio State University.

Jessica Pomerantz

Treasurer

Jessica Pomerantz is a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist with United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Middle East Bureau. Before working at USAID, she was an Internal Evaluator for the United States Food and Drug Administration. Prior to government service, Jessica was a Business Journalist for Albuquerque Business First and Operations Manager for an agribusiness in New Mexico specializing in green chile peppers. Jessica formerly served as the Assistant to the Permanent Observer for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance at the United Nations and in the Evaluation Unit of the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in Kabul, Afghanistan. She has a Masters degree in Public Administration, International Development, from the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Economics from the University of New Mexico.

Sana Ahmed Wilder

Secretary

Sana is a Lead Program Evaluator in the Office of Program Performance, Analysis, and Evaluation with the Small Business Administration, where she plans and manages evaluation of pandemic relief programs. Her professional interests include data visualization, design and evaluation planning within equitable frameworks. Previously, Sana lead and managed evaluation of education programs across K-12, higher education, museum, and research environments where her expertise included quantitative analysis, assessing community needs, capacity building. Sana holds degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment as well as Education Administration from Lynn University.

Evan is a recent graduate from American University with a Masters of Arts in International Relations. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Global Studies with minors in Political Science and East Asian Languages and Cultures. Before pursuing the MA, Evan spent time working in Tokyo, Japan in the grain industry as a Purchasing Analyst. Evan looks forward to entering the Evaluation field while serving as Program Co-Chair and Scholarships Co-Coordinator at WE.

Christian Gineste is a data scientist who believes that data and artificial intelligence can be used for social good and in the service of human rights. At the heart of Christian's work is his passion for using data to protect vulnerable populations and minorities. He is skilled in Python, R, QGIS, and Stata and published two articles on violence against refugees in the Journal of Peace Research. He earned a Masters in Public Affairs from Sciences-Po Paris, and a Masters in International Relations and Methodology from the University of Pittsburgh. Christian is originally from Perpignan, France and now resides in Ashburn, Virginia. He serves as a Board member for various nonprofit organizations, including the League of women Voters of District of Columbia (LWV-DC) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia. He is also a mentor of Big Brother Big Sisters of America and a volunteer for the Project on Government Oversight. 

Fanni Farago is a third year PhD student in Sociology at George Mason University and a Research Assistant at the Institute for Immigration Research (IIR). She came to Mason after obtaining her Masters of Arts in Sociology from the University of Houston. Fanni is a new and emerging evaluator with mixed-methods research experiences and interests in education and immigration related program evaluations. Prior to graduate school, she obtained a Bachelors of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin and provided direct services to immigrants in various roles. For example, she worked as an employment-based immigration paralegal at Foster LLP and as a Workforce Development Intern for refugees at the International Rescue Committee. These work experiences continue to inform her desire to become an evaluator who can help organizations assess and develop their support services for varied immigrant communities. 

Jacqueline Singh

Program Committee Advisor

Kelly holds a PhD in Applied Anthropology and International Development from American University and has over twenty years of experience as a Program Evaluator and Program Officer. As the Senior Program Evaluator and Analyst for the Peace Corps, she led 6 Host Country Impact Studies, a summative evaluation of the agency’s impact based on its strategic goals. She was selected by Peace Corps to design and implement the formative evaluation system for the Kate Puzey Volunteer Protection Act across 65 countries and received the Director’s Distinguished Service Award for this work. Kelly’s other federal experience includes Evaluation Specialist contracted with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, USAID, and serving on the Obama White House Evaluation Working Group for the Gender-Based Violence Prevention Strategy. 

As a Program Officer and Director, Kelly has managed federally funded grants, MOUs, and Cooperative Agreements. As the Senior Program Officer at the Institute of International Education, she managed two USAID funded gender programs. As the Program Director for the University of Virginia’s NSF ADVANCE IT grant, UVA CHARGE, she oversaw program implementation to address gender equity in STEM departments. Kelly has also been the Director of Institutional Research and Analytics at the University of Lynchburg, where she worked to transition the university to a data-driven organization in addition to meeting the mandatory state and federal reporting requirements.

Kelly ran her own consulting business many years and returned to consulting in 2019. She has evaluated cultural exchange programs, Bystander Intervention programs, anti-bias programs, English language learning programs, economic development programs, knowledge networks, and STEM education programs. She specializes in formative evaluation, gender and equity-focused evaluation, multi-sited evaluations, evaluation capacity building, data visualization, data management, qualitative research methods, survey design, self-efficacy metrics, and STEM equity. She is CITI certified in social science, was an NSEP and FLAS Fellow, and has worked in over twelve countries. Kelly is passionate about building the evaluation capacity of program professionals and transitioning organizations to be data-driven learning organizations.

Valerie Caracelli, PhD

New Professional and Student Coordinator

Dr. Valerie Caracelli is a Senior Social Science Analyst in the Center for Evaluation Methods and Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Valerie assists in conducting congressionally requested studies and consults with GAO Teams on evaluation design issues. She has published in leading evaluation journals and has served on a variety of editorial review boards. She received her undergraduate degree in Psychology in 1979 and her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University in 1988.

Valerie has been a member of the American Evaluation Association since its founding. On the AEA Board of Directors from 2007-2009, she served as liaison to the Ethics Committee and helped develop additional case study training materials on the Guiding Principles for Evaluators.  She recently received the 2016 AEA Robert Ingle Service Award. Valerie has been active in the Washington Evaluators, one of AEA's first local affiliates, serving as board member and in other positions for over 20 years.

Marie-Ellen Ehounou

Membership Coordinator

Amgad Farah

Communications Coordinator

Amgad is a graduate from George Washington University with a Masters in Public Health with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health. She is a registered doctor in Sudan but decided to pursue public health. During her internship in Sudan, she completed her first masters degree, a masters of science in public and tropical health where she was fortunate to experience clinical  and preventive health simultaneously. That experience made her realize she could do so much more outside the hospital walls. That experience was also when she discovered her passion for research and evaluation. Outside her professional life. Amgad enjoys traveling, reading, weightlifting, MMA group classes, baking, sketching and learning languages. 

Joanna Prout

Social Media Coordinator

Joanna is a Psychologist and Program Evaluator at the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She combines her clinical experience and research background to build systems for communicating data that make school- and community-based mental health supports usable and effective. Joanna's work emphasizes the importance of partnering with service providers and the people intended to benefit from services in defining impact.

Stacey S. Merola, PhD

Evaluation Without Borders (EWB) Coordinator

Stacey S. Merola is the  Practice Lead for Research and Evaluation at Guardians of Honor, LLC. Stacey is a multiple award-winning evaluator with over 19 years in the field, primarily conducting evaluations in the field of education. Prior to joining the Guardians of Honor, LLC, Stacey ran her own consulting firm for many years. a respected research methodologist, Stacey has designed and implemented rigorous evaluations for a range of clients spanning the non-profit, corporate and public sectors. She has extensive experience building relationships with school districts, K-12 curriculum developers, non-profits and institutes of higher education to rigorously evaluate the impact of educational interventions, including mixed-methods evaluations. Her goal is to work in partnership with her clients to gain a deep understanding of the factors impacting program implementation as well as outcomes. Stacey earned both her Bachelors of Science in Biology Sciences and PhD in Sociology from Cornell University.

Mindelyn Anderson, PhD

Evaluation Without Borders (EWB) Coordinator

Maryfrances Porter is the Co-CEO and Founder of Partnerships for Strategic Impact®. She brings 25 years of experience in research; working with nonprofits, foundations, and local governments; program development and evaluation; grant writing; and developing strategic vision and action. Partnerships for Strategic Impact® coaches, trains, and supports nonprofits, foundations, and corporate CSRs in telling powerful impact stories. We partner with clients to tell impact stories positioned for social justice, equity, and returning power to those who have been disenfranchised. Maryfrances completed her B.A. at Emory University and her Ph.D. in clinical and community psychology at the University of Virginia. In addition to being a consultant, she is a licensed, clinical psychologist specializing in treating anxiety.

Betsy Kaeberle is a Senior Analyst at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) where she is an internal evaluator supporting organizational evaluation efforts and projects aimed to increase the quality and impact of ASTHO’s work in public health. Prior to joining the ASTHO team, she worked for several years in healthcare and survey research. She’s also worked in non-profit organizations evaluating programs in HIV, gender, and income-generation. A self-proclaimed data nerd, Betsy enjoys spending her working hours deep in a dataset (quantitative or qualitative, it doesn’t matter) and then working with stakeholders to use, learn from, and reflect on what is found, and why. She received her BA in International Affairs at James Madison University and holds an MPH in Global Health Program Design, Monitoring and Evaluation from The George Washington University.

Deborah is a seasoned Evaluator with 20+ years of program evaluation experience within various sectors, including national nonprofits, Foundations, Associations, and the U.S. Government. Currently, Deborah is a Manager at Grant Thornton LLC supporting federal clients by helping them meet the requirements of the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (or the spirit of the act). She also is managing five program evaluations. Prior to her work at Grant Thornton LLC, Deborah worked for a small boutique consulting firm supporting the National Science Foundation and George Mason University.