Affiliate Consultants

Marc is an independent evaluation consultant who has worked with numerous non-profit agencies, government organizations and funders/foundations in their efforts to develop evaluation systems that are useful in helping organizations better evaluate and understand their impacts on the populations they serve.  He has particular expertise in working with local and community based organizations and coalitions in the development of evaluation tools and data collection instruments, and in understanding how to use data for program development, planning and reporting efforts.  Marc has worked with organizations and agencies in the realms of social and human services, environmental education, elementary and secondary education, the arts, substance abuse prevention, and youth development.  Marc was an associate at ORS for over ten years prior to launching his independent consulting firm.

Allen Cheadle is a Research Professor in the Department of Health Services, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle. He was trained as an economist but most of his recent work has focused on doing program evaluations and developing methods of evaluating community-based health-promotion programs.  He has worked on the evaluations of several community-based programs in the Western U.S., including the Kaiser Family Foundation Community Health Promotion Grants program and the Minority Youth Health Project in Seattle, and is currently leading the evaluation of the Kaiser Permanente Community Health Initiatives. He has completed a number of evaluations for community-based organizations in Seattle, including International District Housing Alliance, Seattle Youth Involvement Network, and Fremont Public Association.  He was the lead for the Community Research Center, a Center for Disease Control-funded project to assist community-based organizations in grant-writing and evaluation.

Carolyn Cohen is a consultant with over 20 years of experience in conducting evaluation, research, and public policy studies. She is the owner of Cohen Research & Evaluation LLC based in Seattle, Washington, and is a founding member of Program Evaluators Northwest. Her work includes evaluation and organizational development relating to K-16 academic and vocational education programs; community partnerships; volunteer endeavors; and civic capacity-building efforts. She has developed and pioneered the use of Evaluation Learning Circles as a means to coach clients in learning to think evaluatively, understand evaluation findings, and use evaluation strategies in their own work. She is particularly interested in using Appreciative Inquiry and success-based approaches. She greatly enjoys all aspects of facilitation, whether for planning, program development, or evaluation.

Carolyn's guiding philosophy is that an evaluator is in a partnership role with clients. She enjoys bringing evaluative thinking and expertise to the table, and helping clients identify outcomes, assess successes, and pinpoint areas for improvement.

Sangree is an early childhood and social services leader who has worked at the national, regional and state levels in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She has extensive experience in influencing and executing cross-agency initiatives and public-private partnerships. She has developed and managed numerous projects and programs as well as researched and conceptualized initiatives at private, non-profit and public agencies. In her work leading others in outcome-based planning and change management, she has particularly specialized in quality improvement and system development initiatives, negotiating and managing complex projects with multiple partners and multifaceted relationships.

Sangree has a reputation for being a big thinker, but also maintaining a focus on practical steps that can be taken to assure success. Among her successful efforts as Washington Head Start State Collaboration Director was a project to develop a comprehensive set of early childhood development guidelines and strategies for adults known as the Washington Early Learning and Development Benchmarks. She also worked with other ORS partners to develop a framework for connecting health, early learning and education efforts in Washington called Kids Matter. In her role as Assistant Director for the Department of Early Learning and in previous non-profit positions, she has built partnerships across the sectors in support of children's health and mental health, early learning and K-12 linkage with health and early childhood programs. Recently she has worked on a compendium of policy options for early learning advocates and supported Oregon DVSA stakeholders in development of a Theory of Change for a Battered Persons' initiative.

Sangree is known for prompting innovative thinking with her book club for policy makers and her strategic use of thought pieces as part of effectively planning and assessing efforts. Her publications are also valued for their clear messaging and appealing layout. Her work with ORS has been widely used in Washington and Colorado, as a basis for the strategic thinking of related initiatives.

A "noticer", Sangree intertwines insights she gains from her personal and work activities, bringing experiences from travel, reading and interpersonal interactions into her work. A dedicated practitioner of yoga, she manages to balance a busy professional life with her interests in art, cuisine, out-of-the box thinking and humor.

Garrison is well-known as a systems-thinker who connects disparate efforts and details. Having served in senior and executive management positions in the private, public and non-profit sectors, Garrison is adept at asking provocative questions that can help to identify the needs and interests of stakeholders and connect them to concrete steps and outcomes.

Before moving to philanthropy, where he has worked across sectors to develop partnerships such as the Washington Build initiative, the Early Care and Education Coalition and Thrive by Five Washington, Garrison worked in the public sector to develop and implement numerous process improvement projects that changed policy and practice. While serving as state preschool director, he was a co-author of the state's preschool program standards, the preschool marketing strategy and preschool program evaluation and management information systems specifications. As an administrator at the Department of Social and Health Services, he negotiated processes and legal agreements between the agency and the local prosecutor and attorney general's office and worked with partners to develop a pro se legal center for parents.

During his years in philanthropy, Garrison was a major supporter of the state's Washington Early Learning and Development Benchmarks which describe what children should be able to know and do by specific developmental stages. He was co-lead in development of the Kids Matter framework which helps partners across the health, education and early learning sectors to understand how their plans and activities fit into a larger framework of strategies and outcomes across the state.

With one adult daughter studying in New York and a son who is currently applying to college, Garrison finds ways to focus additional time and energy on causes that are important to him. Among these interests is a passion for youth civic engagement and support for Washington Youth and Government.

Bill Leon is president of Geo Education & Research, an evaluation consulting firm chartered in Washington State and serving nonprofit, government, foundation and business clients across the United States and abroad.  He uses community development and empowerment approaches in all of his work.  This means he places an emphasis on collaboration with his clients and other stakeholders; he strives to bring all relevant points of view to bear on the tasks before him; and he integrates evaluation efforts into his clients’ work processes. 

One of Bill’s strengths is the wide range of evaluation services he provides including strategic planning for evaluation; developing theories of change and logic models to frame evaluations; management of evaluation processes; development of data collections tools; collection, management, analysis, display, and reporting quantitative and qualitative data; reporting evaluation results; training and coaching others in evaluation; and assisting organizations in selecting evaluators and evaluation methods. 

Bill Leon holds a Ph.D. degree in Geography from the University of Washington in Seattle.  As an affiliate of ORS, President of Geo Education & Research, and former staff at ORS, Bill Leon has 30 years of experience as a researcher and evaluation consultant. 

Afsaneh has been a consultant working with ORS on a number of evaluation projects focusing on community development programs.  She has many years of experience conducting research and evaluation in public health programs, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS, violence prevention, and programs targeting children and families.  Many of these programs are housed in community based agencies, as well as health departments, professional associations, and partnerships and collaborations.

Afsaneh uses her skills to collect and analyze qualitative data using ethnography, focus groups, and in-depth interviews to supplement survey data.  This approach provides a context and a deeper understanding of the findings.

She has worked with many community based programs that serve diverse cultural populations to develop logic models, evaluation plans, and data collection systems, and she strives to illustrate the relevance of evaluation data for strengthening programs.  At ORS, Afsaneh has assisted on various evaluations including Kids Matter, Getting School Ready for the Foundation for Early Learning, and evaluation of the statewide Child Care Resource and Referral Network. 

Afsaneh earned her Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Southern California and served as a research faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago for almost a decade. Besides research and evaluation, Afsaneh has a passion for painting landscapes in water color and making functional hand-built pottery.