ETB Blogs

Reflections and Future Vision: ETB Team’s Strategic Retreat and Plans for 2025

11/11/24 by Nancy Vang

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The Expanding the Bench® (ETB) Team annually strives to meet in person for our strategic retreat during the week of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) conference to reflect and plan for the year ahead as we continue to evolve our programs and offerings. This year the ETB Team was able to meet for one and a half days while in Portland, OR focusing on our internal team structure and goals for the 2025 calendar year. especially as we are excited to expand ETB with a more regional focus in parts of the U.S. With a growing team and 10-year celebration of the Initiative, this was an important space to ground ourselves in its past while providing recognition to its present and continue building out a vision for the future.

Together, we spent time on team-building activities with a world-cafe style of questions understanding each other as individuals and how we see ETB and culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE) embedded into our own roles and the evaluation field. The ETB Team is currently at its biggest team yet with ten staff supporting the project. This led us to review our current team structure, roles, and responsibilities and determine where to best right-size staff across the needs of the Initiative.

Pictured from left to right: Cachet Evans, Elizabeth Waetzig, Manny Stegall, Angel Villalobos, Jen Wilkins, Nancy Vang, Neda Moussapour. (Not pictured: Chyenne Mallinson, Mimi Draft, Nevidita Ranade)

We dived into the start of planning ETB Regional and identifying our goals for this expansion of ETB into geographically focused areas of the country. It was important to clarify what we envision our team’s role being as bridge builders to facilitating more in person connections between evaluators of color, CREE-practicing evaluators, & funders committed to CREE.

Behind the scenes, ETB strategic planning sessions at the AEA Conference.
Dr. Tanisha Tate Woodson discussing the LEEAD Program.
Nancy Vang, guiding the session with audio/visuals.

We dedicated programmatic reflections during the retreat to the LEEAD Program as we prepared to culminate the 5th and largest cohort of 19 Scholars at the ETB Gathering. We explored eligibility requirements of scholars and discussed the importance of the diversity of lived experiences that makes the program a meaningful experience for incoming evaluators, mentors, and practicum sites. Our team will continue strategizing and welcoming feedback from the ETB community as we prepare to launch Cohort 6 applications in 2025.

While our time together ran short, our team is continuing to put together our plans for 2025 and beyond across programs and offerings in the ACE Evaluation Network, LEEAD Program, fundraising, and field building. We are excited to share more news and look forward to inviting the ETB community into this journey with us.