AEA TIGs are completely volunteer driven. The leadership team is necessary for the TIG to accomplish the mission of ensuring there are feminist voices heard at AEA. Feminist TIG leadership positions are considered 3-year terms. Chair and co-chair positions are responsible for convening the TIG business meeting at the annual conference, attending quarterly AEA conference calls, and providing strategic leadership throughout the year as determined by volunteer activities. Program chair and program co-chair positions are responsible for the planning and development of the annual conference proposal review process and curating a weeklong series of blog posts for AEA365.
Leadership Team
Kirsten Zeiter - Chair
Kirsten Zeiter is excited to serve in the chair role with the Feminist Issues in Evaluation TIG in 2020. Kirsten is passionate about applying a feminist evaluator lens to international work in gender equality and women's empowerment. She is currently an Evaluation Specialist with EnCompass, LLC in Rockville, MD, where she provides technical assistance to clients on monitoring, evaluation, and gender analysis. Kirsten previously worked at the National Democratic Institute in Washington, DC and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. Her work has led her to travel to a variety of locations, including Afghanistan, Colombia, Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Lao, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and Timor-Leste.
Christine Bell - Co-Chair
Christine Bell is honored to take on a new role in 2020 as co-chair in order to support the TIGs efforts of planning the annual conference program, networking with other TIGs and organizations, and mentoring incoming members of the leadership team. Because of her experience as program co-chair from 2017-2019 Christine is qualified and dedicated to supporting the incoming leadership team members. She is located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she evaluates local and national programs related to higher education. She is passionate about supporting women in higher education and women in the STEM fields.
Élyse McCall-Thomas - Program Chair and Webmaster
Élyse McCall-Thomas is pleased and excited to take on a new role with the FIE TIG as the Program Chair to support the planning and development of TIG conference program, a weeklong series of blog posts for AEA365, and other initiatives including fostering cross-TIG collaborations. Élyse works as a Senior Program Evaluation Analyst with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. In this role she advocates and strives to support greater integration of sex and gender-based analysis in the federal government’s evaluation function.
Melissa Chapman Hayes - Program Co-Chair
Melissa is Director of Evaluation at Professional Data Analysts (PDA), an evaluation firm in Minneapolis dedicated to helping health initiatives succeed with sound, effective data-centric solutions. PDA is a carbon neutral company that has been serving clients since 1984. Melissa designs, implements, and leads multiple evaluation projects at PDA. She also oversees staff evaluators and manages the broader direction of the evaluation division. In addition, Melissa serves as an adjunct faculty in Evaluation Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the immediate past president of the Minnesota Evaluation Association and was a Program Co-Chair for the American Evaluation Association’s annual meeting in 2019. Melissa graduated with a doctorate in psychological and quantitative foundations with an emphasis in evaluation from The University of Iowa. Prior positions includes managing director of the Minnesota Evaluation Studies Institute at the University of Minnesota and Associate Director of the Center for Evaluation and Assessment at The University of Iowa.
Zoë Masterpole - Program Co-Chair
Zoë Masterpole is thrilled by the opportunity to work as the program co-chair, alongside Elyse and Melissa. As a new member to AEA and the Feminist TIG, Zoe is excited to get involved in the programming that drew her to the TIG in the first place. She is located at the University of Minnesota, where she is currently pursuing a Masters degree at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She aspires to work as an evaluator in international programming around food security and gender equality after she graduates in May 2020. She has experience working on program evaluations throughout Greater Minnesota, where she was born and raised, as well as internationally in West Africa and Southeast Asia. She is dedicated to ensuring the important role that women play globally does not go unrecognized, especially during evaluative efforts.
Kathryn Mathes - Newsletter Editor
Kathryn Mathes holds a PhD in Program Evaluation from Cornell University and has 22 years of experience planning and implementing utilization focused federally-funded evaluations (i.e., SAMHSA, ACF, OJJDP, OAH, etc.) in an broad array of community-based human service programs (e.g., trauma-informed, gender responsive, co-occurring behavioral health and substance abuse treatment, child welfare, family preservation/intensive in-home, family strengthening and incarcerated people with serious mental illness). Particular expertise in designing evaluation systems that standardizes data capture, training staff in routine collection of high quality data and promoting measurement based care that advances organizational learning and data drive decision making.