EXPERIENCE

These evaluations were conducted for organizations including the EEOC Office of Inspector General, the NYC Mayor's Children’s Cabinet, the National Science Foundation, California Department of Health Care Services, Depaul International, First 5 LA, Casey Family Programs, Building Changes, Fairfax County, Missoula Public Health, Polaris, Oklahoma Human Services, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Southern California (USC).Most of the studies Lauren works on are mixed methods, and she contributes across the arc of the study. On the quantitative side, she handles survey design and programming, recruitment and administration, conducting cognitive and usability testing, and descriptive analysis. The qualitative side is where she's strongest. She leads these components from soup to nuts: designing the approach, developing instruments, recruiting participants, conducting interviews, facilitating focus groups, analyzing data, and writing and presenting findings. She enjoys cross-method synthesis where data visualization and clear communication turn findings into insights decision-makers can act on. Much of her work involves reaching people whose experiences are hardest to capture, such as caregivers in the child welfare system, youth and families accessing behavioral health services, young adults leaving foster care, and families in housing crisis.Previously, Lauren was a Senior Legislative Assistant in U.S. Representative Colleen Hanabusa’s field office, managing a portfolio across health and human services, education, public housing, foreign affairs, and civil rights, and resolving hundreds of constituent cases with federal, state, and local agencies. Helping constituents and contributing to how policy decisions are actually made shaped her conviction that evaluation belongs alongside the design of policies and programs, informing decisions while they're still being made rather than arriving only at the end to render a verdict.