October 2026
by Mylonne Ellison, ETB LEEAD Program Director

If you looked at my desk on any given day, you would probably see multiple screens, several tabs open, notes nearby, and more than one thing competing for my attention. As a neurodivergent person, my workspace often reflects how my brain works: There is a lot happening at once, but there are also connections between it all. In many ways, that is how I think about my work with Expanding the Bench® (ETB), too.

I’m Mylonne Ellison, and I serve as the program director for Leaders in Equitable Evaluation and Diversity (LEEAD). I joined the ETB team in July 2025. While my role has remained centered on LEEAD, my work has expanded beyond the program, giving me opportunities to contribute to broader ETB strategy, planning, and conversations about where we are going as an initiative.

Right now, much of my focus is on learning from where LEEAD has been while preparing for where it is going. Our team is facilitating interviews for the LEEAD Liaison Program, with the hope of having representation across all six cohorts. At the same time, we are deep in planning for the culmination of LEEAD Cohort 6 next month during the American Evaluation Association (AEA) annual conference. Both efforts require us to listen, reflect, and use what we learn to shape what comes next.

That process of learning and evolving resonates with me personally. I am a Black, neurodivergent woman who lives at the intersection of multiple identities and experiences. I am also a social worker by training and what some may call an “accidental evaluator.” I did not begin my career imagining myself in evaluation, but I have come to recognize that evaluation has always been embedded in how I understand people, systems, communities, and change.

My lived experiences shape that understanding, too. Last month was Suicide Prevention Month, which holds deep personal meaning for me, having lost both my mother and my brother to suicide. Experiences with grief, loss, mental health, and navigating systems do not disappear when I log into work. They influence the questions I ask, whose experiences I notice, how I think about belonging, and what I understand equity to require. For me, lived experience and professional expertise are not separate; they continually inform one another.

That is part of what motivates me to help ETB grow. I hope we continue creating space for evaluators and others who are part of this larger ecosystem whose pathways are nonlinear, whose knowledge comes from community as much as classrooms, and whose lived experiences strengthen how we understand evidence, impact, and change. Over the next year and beyond, I hope ETB continues learning out loud, listening to our community, examining what works and what does not, and being willing to evolve.

And that learning applies to me, too. Right now, self-care means making room for rest without requiring myself to earn it first. I am learning to slow down, protect my boundaries, reconnect with creativity, and remember that sustaining myself is part of sustaining the work.

Because learning alone does not create progress. What we choose to do with what we learn does.