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I am the Executive Director of the Center for International Research, Education, and Development (CIRED) at Virginia Tech, where I'm also an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education. I was elected to serve as Board Member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) from 2022-2025. My practice and research are focused primarily on participatory community education and development, program evaluation, evaluation capacity building, positive youth development, and the politics of knowledge. I received my PhD in Education from Cornell University in 2013, where I got my start in evaluation as a graduate research assistant in the Cornell Office for Research on Evaluation under the direction of Bill Trochim. I was honored to be recognized by AEA as a 2017 recipient of the the Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator Award.
From 2017-2022, I served as the Chief of Party/Director of the Feed the Future Senegal Youth in Agriculture project, supported by USAID/Senegal, which was a 5-year $4 million project focused on increasing youth engagement in Senegal’s economic growth. We supported the institutionalization of sustainable positive youth development (PYD) and vocational training systems that create dynamic and profitable entrepreneurship and employment opportunities for youth, focusing especially on agricultural value chains and markets.
From 2015-2017, I served as Chief of Party/Director of the USAID Education and Research in Agriculture (USAID/ERA) project in Senegal. USAID/ERA was an agricultural education and training (AET) capacity building initiative, based on the U.S. land-grant model, that worked to promote food security in Senegal by creating and enhancing collaborative research, extension, and education platforms.
Additionally, I serve the profession in the following roles:
Associate Editor, Evaluation and Program Planning
Editorial Board Member of New Directions for Evaluation
Editorial Board Member of the American Journal of Evaluation
Editorial Board Member of the African Evaluation Journal
Program Co-Chair of the AEA 2019 & 2022 conferences
Program Committee Member of the AEA 2018 conference
Past program Co-Chair of the AEA Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building Topical Interest Group
Specialties: Non-formal education, evaluation capacity building, research methodologies, community development, agricultural education and training
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