Stephanie Cabell joined Washington Evaluators after attending a meeting in the spring of 2015 and became a WE member in a relatively short time. Stephanie is now a member of the board, serving in the position of Secretary. Born in Charleston, SC and raised on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Stephanie’s undergraduate studies in foreign languages and literature took her to Germany where she spent her junior year and a post-graduate year as a Fulbright Recipient.
A federal career as a performance management and evaluation specialist eventually led Stephanie to becoming a member of the American Evaluation Association and now of Washington Evaluators. As an evaluation team lead at the U.S. Department of State, Stephanie enjoys working with the 40+ State Department bureaus and offices to plan for and implement evaluations coveringthe diversity of State Department activities. Stephanie and a team of colleagues use this diversity to their best advantage by defining “evaluation” to include special studies, process evaluations, experience reviews, and case studies. Stephanie asserts, "This expanded definition of evaluation has enabled our agency’s bureaus and offices to design evaluative studies that align with the mission of bureaus and offices and their information needs.” An annual evaluation conference, a website devoted to evaluation resources, an evaluation toolkit, and regular meetings of State’s 440+ member Evaluation Community of Practice have helped build and sustain a culture for doing evaluations at State. “It’s been gratifying to see the progress we have made as an agency in not only implementing evaluations, but also using evidence and evaluation to inform our planning and budgeting processes.”
Prior to joining the State Department in November 2006, Stephanie spent 17 years working at the U.S. Department of Labor as a performance specialist in the employment and training arena. Says Stephanie, “Becoming a civil servant was not a conscious decision but it was the best decision I ever made.” She looks forward to working with WE and helping spread the word about WE among the greater DC federal evaluation community.
