In naming what is happening in the evaluation ecosystem and imagining what is possible together, Expanding the Bench® (ETB) is elevating the experiences of Advancing Culturally-responsive and Equitable (ACE) Evaluation Network Members and exploring how power, funding, and identities shape evaluation, and how we can respond with intention, courage, and care. ACE Evaluation Network Member Ryoko Yamaguchi, PhD, introduced a thoughtful framework for building a supportive evaluation ecosystem (B-SEEN), emphasizing the intentional development of an ecosystem that recognizes evaluators, funders, partners, and community members all play essential roles in shaping a future where evaluation work can thrive, especially when grounded in equity, care, and a sense of abundance. We hope to continue deepening connections among members of the evaluation ecosystem who are committed to equity, inclusion, and community-led approaches by sharing their stories. In this blog, Ryoko reflects on her personal journey into evaluation and what she’s learned from leading the community forum series.

December 2025 
by Ryoko Yamaguchi, PhD; Founder & President, Plus Alpha Research & Consulting LLC

Getting Lost on Purpose: An Evaluation Journey Rooted in Lived Experience

I have no internal GPS. I am the type of person who always gets lost. I even confuse GPS systems because by the time they “recalibrate,” I am even more lost. Poor Google Maps. It keeps recalibrating, and it cannot keep up with how often I lose my way.

That is how I feel about my evaluation journey. It has been an accidental road trip. In my academic training to become a professor, my advisers said, “Take a left,” but I got lost and took a right. My evaluation journey feels like a long, winding road where I keep learning as I go.

I began my career as a special education teacher, holding two licenses in learning disabilities and emotional and behavioral disorders. In the Chicago area, I taught middle and high school students primarily in residential and psychiatric settings, including students experiencing severe mental health crises and juvenile sex offenders. I loved my students and the sense of impact, but I burned out on the systems around them. I believed research could help improve those systems and reach more students. My research focused on adolescent development and how schools can serve as protective factors. I trained as a quantitative methodologist with a focus on hierarchical linear modeling.

After my postdoctoral work, I moved to Washington, D.C., for my first “real” job at a large contract research firm. That was when I officially began conducting evaluations and attending American Evaluation Association conferences. My projects were federally funded external evaluations or analytic technical assistance designed to meet specific evidence thresholds, such as randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental designs.

When my daughter entered public school, I made a drastic turn. For the first time, I intentionally got myself lost, and I have been on that road ever since. While I analyzed data on tens of thousands of adolescents, my N of one, my daughter, was experiencing the same racism my husband and I faced decades earlier. She had two English-speaking parents, two college-educated parents, and one parent who led PTA and district advisory committees. Yet she was denied opportunities she qualified for, disciplined for asking for help, and subjected to overt and subtle microaggressions in a school environment that felt hostile to students of color.

It was a rude and lonely awakening. Not only did the research I was doing feel insufficient, but much of the broader evidence base felt wrong. I lacked colleagues who understood how demoralizing it was to be a mother of a girl of color and a researcher and evaluator of color in predominantly white institutions. Research told us what students needed to succeed, and my daughter had all of it. Still, the system made her feel like a failure at just 5 years old. When I raised these contradictions, I was told my experience was an N of one or warned not to bring personal experience into professional spaces.

Leaving my original academic path to forge one informed by lived experience has been frightening and lonely, but it has also been a gift. My original goal as a special education teacher was to show students that someone believed in them. My evaluation journey now returns to that intention, with a shift toward improving systems so they truly make a difference.

Being part of the ACE Evaluation Network made this journey less isolating. For the first time, I was not the only evaluator of color in the room. I could speak from lived experience and receive empathy rather than sympathy. Through the Building a Supportive Evaluation Ecosystem Network community forum, I was invited to speak not about estimates and standard errors, but about my story.

On this new path, I began with ontology, how I embody my values. Across individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels, my guiding principle is to improve, not prove. I work to resist dominance culture, either-or thinking, and the privileging of written evidence alone. I then turned to epistemology, how I embrace abundance. Trained as a positivist, I was taught there was one way to show evidence. Now, I embrace multiple ways of knowing and multiple ways to demonstrate impact, aligned with my values. Finally, I arrived at methodology, how I enact collective action. I now use participatory action research and human-centered design to center student and parent voice in improving teaching and learning.

Through the B-SEEN community forum series and connections with ETB members, I end this year with a profound realization: I am not lost at all.

~ Ryoko Yamaguchi, PhD; Founder & President, Plus Alpha Research & Consulting LLC