October 24, 2024

On behalf of the Evaluation Officer Council, it is our honor to announce the winners of the Fourth Annual Evaluation Community Awards Program! Each year, we are overwhelmed with pride and admiration for the individuals and teams nominated and selected to receive these awards, and this year is no exception. To honor Federal civil service leaders working tirelessly to advance evaluation and evidence-based policymaking across the Federal Government, we solicited nominations from across the Federal evaluation community. We received over 30 fantastic nominations representing 20 different agencies or components, and OMB announced the selected awardees at the October Evaluation Officer Council meeting.

The 2024 Evaluation Community Awards recipients highlighted below provide a glimpse of the how the Federal evaluation community is working tirelessly to improve programs and operations across the Government. The profiles below share excerpts from the winning nominations to illustrate the myriad ways that Federal evaluators, and the high-quality evidence they generate, inform critical program and policy decisions and support positive change. We share these profiles to recognize the exemplary work of the awardees and inspire others to engage with and support the Federal evaluation community in all they do to improve Federal programs and decision-making!

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Evaluation Officer Council Distinguished Contribution Award
For Evaluation Officer Council members who make exceptional contributions to the Federal evaluation community.

“Mr. Klimek is committed to breaking silos and inspiring a culture of evaluation across DOC. He has worked with internal agency colleagues to support the design of a fast-track clearance process to promote efficiency and innovative solutions across DOC grant programs. He has led a collaborative and working agreement with statistical agencies to link data and enhance cross-departmental evaluations at a global, state, and local level. This collaboration is critical for evidence-building that impacts the economic and social well-being of individuals, small businesses, and communities.

The working agreement across statistical agencies and bureaus allows a deeper dive into the data by giving Evaluation leads better access and data linkage abilities to determine programmatic and participant outcomes and impact needed to meet various agency's evidence building and evaluation goals and objectives. The goal is to develop tools and models to better guide federal investments. Under his leadership, bureaus have come together to work toward a common goal and participates in a community of practice, monthly, to share and learn from each other, which also further inspires a culture of evidence building and evaluation. During these presentations, all of DOC Bureau Heads and other key staff members are invited to learn and participate.”

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Evaluation and Evidence Team of the Year Award
For Federal teams who collaborate across disciplines and silos to conduct evaluation(s) that generate critical evidence for decision-making in or across agencies.

“… this multi-disciplinary team has taken a portfolio approach to studying complex issues to generate the necessary evidence to inform decision-making at the enterprise level for this cabinet-level agency. [The Analysis and Evaluation Division’s] impact spans the SBA and the federal government. This team was tapped by OMB to undertake an equity in procurement evaluation for the entire federal government. The equity in procurement portfolio has advanced using a mixed-method approach comprised of quantitative, qualitative, and experimental methods. … Further, the team is working with GSA's Office of Evaluation Sciences to study how to effectively communicate with federal agencies and contractors to increase participation in SBA certification programs.

Moreover, AED proactively uses a range of available evaluation methods to answer specific learning questions to continuously improve program operations and inform decision-making. … AED continues to work across the agency to break down silos, cultivate a learning culture, and be the resource for evaluations, analyses, and process improvements. These are some of AED's tireless efforts, making this team worthy of this top honor.”

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Evaluation in Action Award
For Federal executives or program leaders who use evaluation results to drive program improvement.

“As Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau for Planning, Learning and Resource Management, Michele Sumilas provided consistent leadership support, direction, resources and encouragement for the generation and use of evidence through evaluations and other processes to inform USAID's most important policy, program and budget decisions. … she consistently asked for evidence synthesis to inform the most challenging policy questions, such as understanding the underlying factors related to migration and adopting meaningful measures of success for policy priorities such as mitigating climate change. She advanced new policies and papers related to evaluations and evidence, such as championing the first-of-its-kind Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning (KMOL) Policy at USAID, and empowering staff to develop a new white paper outlining USAID's principles for evidence generation and use.

… Michele partnered with other senior champions of evidence and evaluation, … to advance USAID's evidence and evaluation practices across all program areas. Under her leadership, all USAID policies now include a practical implementation plan with sections on how monitoring and evaluation will be used to track policy implementation and make adaptations as new evidence and learning emerge…”

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Excellence in Program Evaluation Award
For evaluation leaders or staff who keep initiatives on track and deliver high-quality evaluations that uphold the standards of relevance and utility; independence and objectivity; rigor, transparency, and ethics.

“… Dr. Martin oversees a portfolio of program evaluations and other evidence-building initiatives that mirror Rural Development's (RD) wide-ranging mission. [Her] commitment to the standards of relevance and utility, independence and objectivity, and rigor is evident in her ongoing effort to build a valid and reliable body of program and socio-economic data to assess RD's impact on rural America. Making the data accessible to the public through a set of tools and resources demonstrates her commitment to transparency and ethics. The Rural Data Gateway, for example, includes investment data for more than 65 RD programs that can be viewed and downloaded by members of the public.

… Dr. Martin and her team conduct innovative, relevant, objective, and rigorous program evaluations. As one example of this, they built a rural-centric Distressed Community Index to assess the extent to which RD investments result in community-wide improvements in living conditions, amenities, and services. The analysis produced conclusive evidence that RD programs collectively improved rural communities' wellbeing. It found that a $10 million investment in a rural community can lift a community from a distressed to at-risk status.

Dr. Martin has also been an influential leader at USDA. Her presentations on evaluation designs, methods, and results generate interest by others who want to apply RD's methods to evaluations of their programs.”

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Federal Evaluation Innovator Award
For evaluation mavericks who think up creative and outside-the-box evaluation ideas, help design them, and see them through to execution.

“Tom Hertz developed a method to assess fairness with regard to race in pre-refund audits for taxpayers who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) at the IRS. This was a difficult project, with a high profile in the press and with external stakeholders, especially the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity.

Taxpayers do not report race when they file a 1040. So, first, Tom participated in the development of a model to impute race data for tax filers, collaborating with a team of academics and the Treasury Department. He worked with program personnel to integrate a measure of compliance risk that allowed for a more nuanced bias assessment. He also worked closely with leadership and Treasury policymakers to communicate findings and mitigation options. The mitigations showed program administrators that it was possible to both decrease disparate impact and also increase revenue. Through his efforts, the IRS has effective methods for evaluating disparate impacts that can be applied to other workstreams. Tom is a persuasive advocate for this analysis and has worked long hours to bring it to fruition.”

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Outstanding Evaluation Mentor Award
For evaluation leaders or staff who go above and beyond to provide mentorship, support, and guidance to others in the Federal evaluation community.

“Brooke has done a stellar job of advancing a culture of evaluation across Interior. She meets with our bureaus and communicates the benefits of evaluation, emphasizing the benefits to our customers in understanding impact, what works, and equity. … [H]er greatest achievement this year may be that she is building evaluation capacity within our office. Brooke brought on two high potential, high performing PMFs and led them through a thoughtful and deliberate training process to reorient them from scientists into evaluators. With this new expanded and extremely capable team, Brooke has established a strong demand across Interior for logic models, outcomes analyses, and evaluation pre-work.

The advancements speak for themselves. Our first significant evaluation, [one that is] culturally sensitive to native Hawaiians, is kicking off. We are enabling evaluating effectiveness in processes to relocate coastal Tribal communities at risk due to climate. Our Annual Evaluation Plan reflects increasing buy-in and commitment from our program offices. Our learning agenda update is robust, dynamic, inclusive, and strongly linked to our outcome focused strategic plan.

In short, Brooke is coach, a mentor, a trainer, an analyst, and always, an evaluator with an eye on achieving outcomes. I can't imagine anyone more deserving of this recognition.”

“Savi is a leader and an inspiring mentor who has helped and supported many over her long career in the federal service. During her long career as an evaluation leader, Savi has built an incredible reputation as a trustworthy mentor to both junior staff and senior leadership. Savi is warm and kind, collegial and compassionate, and never hesitant to support her colleagues. … and is a trusted advisor to both her superiors and her peers.

Savi has been an exceptional mentor from the day she joined the Chief Evaluation Office at the Department of Labor… Through weekly meetings and her open-door policy, Savi has cultivated a welcoming environment to troubleshoot challenges and develop solutions. Most importantly, Savi has encouraged my development of leadership competencies by providing me opportunities to lead in our office (e.g., Doctoral Summer Fellowship Program), and outside of our office (e.g., Interagency Council on Evaluation Policy). During a tumultuous period in our office, she served as a steadying force by maintaining the organizational culture of the office. Through her work, Savi exemplifies the values, vision, and mission of the Department of Labor and is the gold standard of outstanding mentorship.”

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• Evaluation-Officer-Council
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