Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist

• Aug 2022 - Present

Founder + Principal

• Oct 2021 - Present

Little Green Garage is a woman-owned consulting firm based in southeast Michigan. We are a thought partner for your big ideas and big questions that lead to big aha moments for people, communities, and systems. LGG is a workshop where you can pull your ideas and questions into a space to tinker, smooth out the rough edges, and experiment. As your thought partners, we’ll help you connect your awesome ideas to opportunities and action. And, we do so while honoring our values of curiosity, play, integrity, racial equity, social justice, wholeheartedness, and relationships. • Emergent Learning – Partner with people and organizations to unlock your best thinking by applying the lessons, data and insights that emerge from your work to improving future results. • Strategic Thinking & Planning – Help articulate your best thinking, establish priorities, and set goals, then connect them to action plans and learning cycles. • Project Management – Assist with organizing, managing, and tracking projects to ensure deadlines and deliverables are met. • Ideation + Design – Help visualize fuzzy or complex concepts in ways that connect with broad audiences. • Grant Research + Advising – Support nonprofits in the pursuit of grant partnerships that strongly align mission, opportunity, and strategy between nonprofits and funders. Little Green Garage is inspired by my dad and his love for all things tinkering and building. Together, we had a wild ambition to restore a rusty, antique Chevy pickup to its former glory. And we did. Little Green Garage is about what’s possible when we can hold space for thinking, tinkering, and making mistakes – whether it’s bringing life to a beat-up truck or nurturing a new idea for social change. Show less

Learning Officer

• Sep 2018 - Oct 2021

Architect of strategic learning, evaluation, and reporting system for $1.2 billion spend-down foundation with the mission to improve the quality of life in southeast Michigan and western New York.Highlights:• Designed theory of change frameworks and processes for the Foundation and each of its eight program areas.• Curate and manage 20+ external developmental, process, and impact evaluations; applied the Equitable Evaluation Framework™ to recommended evaluation strategies and sourcing evaluation partners.• Guided trustees, leadership, and program staff in making sense of and applying evaluation and learning to strategic decisions. Show less

Research Associate

• Mar 2017 - Sep 2018

Supported the Foundation's early strategy-setting and grantmaking through research and analysis of programs, policies, and best practices in eight program areas: early childhood, afterschool, workforce development, entrepreneurship and economic development, caregivers, parks and trails, youth sports, and nonprofit support.Highlights:• Analyzed 84-early stage grants to inform trustee and staff strategic grantmaking decisions.• Oversaw the data collection and analysis of input from 10,000 teens to inform afterschool grantmaking strategies. • Co-created and managed a $5M afterschool STEM grantmaking initiative, including oversight of the project’s developmental evaluation. Show less

Foundation Relations Manager

• Mar 2016 - Feb 2017

Revitalized grant development and revenue for BGCSM by designing and implementing processes to modernize grant writing and reporting. Highlights: • Acquired $500,000 in new grant funding. • Crafted an organizational logic model to guide strategy and grant-seeking opportunities. • Revamped case for support using public data, program outcomes, and youth development research. Revitalized grant development and revenue for BGCSM by designing and implementing processes to modernize grant writing and reporting. Highlights: • Acquired $500,000 in new grant funding. • Crafted an organizational logic model to guide strategy and grant-seeking opportunities. • Revamped case for support using public data, program outcomes, and youth development research.

Development Officer

• Jun 2014 - Mar 2016

Led all marketing, communications, and fundraising efforts for a statewide professional association attending to the certification, training, and advocacy needs of clinical professionals who provide infant mental health home visiting services to Michigan families. Highlights: • Led conversion to a CRM fundraising platform; designed all data capture and reporting processes for donation stewardship. • Co-led redesign of mi-aimh.org. • Built funder support for a statewide research project to validate Infant Mental Health Home Visiting as an evidence-based practice, in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services and University of Michigan researchers. Show less

Grant Writer - Corporate & Foundation Giving

• Oct 2008 - Jun 2014

Orchestrated all private grants development and stewardship for a $48 million, nonprofit human services agency serving western Wayne County and the Detroit, Michigan region. Highlights: • Authored 200+ corporate, foundation, and public grants for a wide array of early childhood, mental health, youth development, and family programs, acquiring $6.9 million in funding over six years. • Pioneered a logic-model based program planning and design process used across program areas. • Mined program outcomes and evaluation data for insights that led to agency’s first early childhood Impact Report. Show less