GSNE TIG Week: To Evaluators Emerging in Our Time of Complexity by Lauren Dixon

Date: Saturday, August 1, 2026

Hello, friends! I am Lauren Dixon, a queer evaluator and organizer of EvalReads, a space to practice facilitation, build community, and learn alongside other evaluators. I write to offer reflections from my practice within a region of the United States known as the Bible Belt, which connects to this perspective from global development, too.

While this blog shares resources from my experience of emergence during a time of escalating political complexity, your context will surely change. So, I always return to the value of community. Practical wisdom does not come in a toolkit or framework alone; it is shaped through the conversations we facilitate, the relationships we steward, and the trust we cultivate with the people we serve and the professionals we meet. I hope these can give a few cairns to orient your journey.

Lesson Learned: Less is more

• Data lover, do we consider both relevance and consequences of our data? In some contexts, there are risks of data violence. In others, covert or safer collection methods carry our hope.
• Data ethics feels more important now than ever. To honor diverse cultural contexts, we must be aware of our own lens to create experiential validity among the communities we serve —so start in the fractal, then learn how to talk to authority about it.

Hot Tip: Spice up reporting

• What (or whose) story does your report tell? We can center the community through Ethical Storytelling and Asset Framing.
• Are you Team Qual or Quant? Why not both? My Quant friends, there are many compelling qualitative data visualization options to explore.
• Will your plan for dissemination reach the audience you need it to? Helping your team define how results will be used early on can reveal who is left out of your communications. Then, you have time to explore other dissemination methods beyond the traditional report.

Lesson Learned: Hold our shared knowledge and ethics

• Can you explain our AEA Guiding Principles For Evaluators in conversation? For example, why do we seek to include ALL community members’ experiences? Have you heard the talk around using terms that honor diverse perspectives?
• Is the work repeating past harm or helping build new futures? Learn the History, Legacy, and Future of CRE, become aware of Systemic Wrongs Reinforced by Common Practices, and choose to do your part to right them.

Hot Tip: To be an evaluator is to be an advocate

• There are countless decisions to make throughout a project’s lifetime, and YOU have power and influence in them. When framing questions, who is being expected to change? When the design feels harmful, we have choices!
• What’s your relationship with the community? Participatory and Democratic Evaluation offer ways to move from engagement to ownership.
• Conflict is important, let’s build skills to navigate it. In times of conflict or fragility, we have deliberative methods to ensure all are heard.

Rad Resource: Join a community

• AEA’s TIGs thrive when members contribute and grow together, so consider joining a group.
• We All Count offers a free, supportive community forum for everything data equity, including Q&A, job postings, and resources.
• EvalReads is a community space where evaluators can practice facilitation, reflect together, and explore how ideas from a text connect to their work and values.

Seek diversity in your peers and mentors. Or, if you can’t seem to find your place or see an unmet need, congratulations! You uncovered an invitation to become a leader of something of your own! I promise there are others who will be excited to show up and support you. Invite them.

AEA is hosting GSNE Week with our colleagues in the Graduate Student and New Evaluators AEA Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our GSNE TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.