Baltimore Area Evaluators

The Evolving Role of AI in Evaluation
2025-12-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom
Join us at BAE’s Winter Webinar and hear from evaluators and data professionals who are integrating AI into their everyday work. Panelists will discuss how they use AI to enhance efficiency, support data analysis, and streamline communications while thinking carefully about ethical considerations. They’ll also share what’s working, what’s tricky, and explore issues such as bias, confidentiality, and data quality. Our conversation about navigating this new space will have plenty of time for questions and discussion!
➡️ Click here to register to attend on Zoom! ⬅️

Panelists include:
Dr. Valerie Ehrlich brings 20 years of learning and evaluation experience across nonprofits, higher education/academia, and consulting. Her work explores human-centered approaches to technology adoption in mission-driven organizations. As Founder and Principal Consultant of Mission Bloom Consulting, she specializes in helping professionals at all levels, from independent consultants to small teams to foundations and larger organizations, leverage generative AI as a thought partner for more effective evaluation and learning.
Dr. Kantahyanee Murray is Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Lift Every Voice Evaluation, Research, and Strategy, a nationally engaged organization that works through relationship in service to racial equity, racial healing, social justice, liberation, systems transformation, and shifting power to communities. She is committed to centering the voices of those most impacted by inequities and furthest from justice, and believes in the power of equity-focused, community-engaged and participatory approaches. Kantahyanee’s interest in leveraging AI as a tool for equitable and liberatory evaluation, emphasizing ethical practice and expanding opportunities for marginalized communities to shape the future of AI as creators and innovators, has led to some internal (i.e., staff experimentation) and external strategies (i.e., community capacity strengthening) ensuring AI contributes to more just and equitable outcomes.
(AI was used in the development of this brief biography)
Brandon Sepulvado, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Methodologist at NORC at the University of Chicago. He partners with public sector organizations at the state, national, and international levels to strengthen data infrastructure and responsibly apply artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance evidence-building capacity. His work includes the use of AI in evaluation efforts and additionally focuses on assessing the fitness-for-purpose of AI tools in research and evaluation activities.

⭐ Enjoy BAE events and webinars? Help us continue to host great events like this by donating $5. We truly appreciate your support!

Winter Meet-Up
2026-02-26 17:30 - 19:00 | R House, 301 W 29th St, Baltimore, MD, 21211
This event has been
Rescheduled!
Join Baltimore Area Evaluators for our winter meetup.

When: Thursday, February 26 | 5:30pm – 7pm
Where: R. House, 301 W 29th St, Baltimore, MD 21211
6:00 pm Program Committee member Jessie will lead a brief share-out on takeaways from the American Evaluation Association national conference, with space for others to share recent learnings.
6:30 pm We’ll gather for a group photo.

Not sure how to find us?
Look for signs we’ll have printed at our tables
We’ll post a photo of our location on our social media
If you’re lost or unsure where to go, shoot us an email at baltimoreareaevaluators@gmail.com. We’ll be checking it throughout the night.
Looking forward to seeing you there!

Prospects for Independent Evaluation Consulting in the Near Future
2026-03-25 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom
Join us for Baltimore Area Evaluator’s March 2026 webinar:
Prospects for Independent Evaluation Consulting in the Near Future
The presentation will explore independent evaluation consultants’ views regarding near-term opportunities in evaluation, whether these views vary depending on certain characteristics, and what consultants think about opportunities in evaluation adjacent fields. It will also discuss strategies some consultants are taking in response to these views. Read more about Tina’s work on independent consulting in the AEA Independent Consulting TIG December 2025 newsletter.

About the presenter:
Tina Faulkner is an experienced monitoring, evaluation and learning officer with a proven track record of innovating to drive results and impact. She has introduced more efficient and effective monitoring and evaluation approaches to capture outcomes of child and forced labor programming and specializes in action-oriented research.
➡️ Please note BAE does not allow AI notetakers in our webinars.
➡️ During the Q&A section of the webinar, we will use a “waterfall” approach – you will be invited to type your question in the chat box but wait to hit “send.” When prompted, everyone will hit enter at the same time. We use this method to ensure that everyone has enough time to write their question.
➡️ Click here to register to attend on Zoom! ⬅️
Enjoy BAE events and webinars? Help us continue to host great events like this by donating $5. We truly appreciate your support!

BAE Board Coffee & Chat
2026-05-06 17:30 - 18:30 | Zoom
For individuals considering running for a position and would like to learn more, we are hosting Coffee & Chat sessions with current and former BAE Board officers.
These informal office hours are an opportunity to ask questions about Board service and hear directly about the experience of serving.
If you are interested in learning more, please see our webpage at https://baltimoreareaevaluators.com/2026-board-elections/
And come talk with us on May 6th at 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM via Zoom.
Join Zoom Meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88324981568?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 883 2498 1568 Passcode: [REDACTED]

BAE Spring In-Person Meetup
2026-05-19 17:30 - 19:00 | Mustang Alley’s, 1300 Bank Street, Baltimore, United States
Join Baltimore Area Evaluators for a night of bowling, networking, and good conversation at our upcoming spring meetup.
We will reserve one lane of duck pin bowling and one lane of 10 pin bowling.
Everyone is welcome, even if you’ve never attended one of our events before! (All are welcomed to join, even if you don’t bowl!)
When: Tuesday, May 19 | 5:30pm – 7pm
Where: Mustang Alley’s, 1300 Bank Street
Note: There should be ample street parking available! Back-up parking in the Little Italy Parking Garage is recommended. For location and rates please visit their website here.
Not sure how to find us?
📍 Look for signs we’ll have printed at our tables
📨If you’re lost or unsure where to go, shoot us an email at baltimoreareaevaluators@gmail.com. We’ll be checking it throughout the night.
Looking forward to seeing you there!

BAE Board Coffee & Chat
2026-05-20 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom
For individuals considering running for a position and would like to learn more, we are hosting Coffee & Chat sessions with current and former BAE Board officers.
These informal office hours are an opportunity to ask questions about Board service and hear directly about the experience of serving.
If you are interested in learning more, please see our webpage at https://baltimoreareaevaluators.com/2026-board-elections/
And come talk with us on May 20th at 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM via Zoom.
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82893367207?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 828 9336 7207 Passcode: [REDACTED]

Better Together: What Happens When Internal and External Evaluators Team Up
2026-06-03 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom
Join us for a Baltimore Area Evaluators (BAE) and Washington Evaluators (WE) co-hosted Summer 2026 webinar:
Better Together: What Happens When Internal and External Evaluators Team Up
What happens when internal and external evaluators truly work as partners instead of operating in separate lanes?
Join evaluators from Family League of Baltimore and Community Science as we share lessons from a collaborative project experience, including what helped us build trust, navigate challenges, strengthen learning, and work better together. Expect practical insights, honest reflections, and real-world strategies for collaborative evaluation practice.

About the presenters:
Brandi Gilbert
Managing Director, Community Science
Dr. Gilbert has extensive experience studying topics and evaluating initiatives to build community resilience to respond to disasters and to enhance youth capacity to lead in their community. She is passionate about making sure youth, in particular youth of color, are authentically engaged in efforts to make their communities more resilient as they experience acute and chronic stressors due to systemic racism and lack of access to supportive adults, opportunities, and other resources to be able to reach their full potential. She is deeply immersed in developing trauma-informed research practices when working with youth who are experiencing such stressors. With training in sociology, with an emphasis on environmental sociology and evaluation, Brandi excels at using research and evaluation to support the development and improvement of strategies to build community resilience and youth leadership.

Carlos Anguiano
Director, Community Science
Dr. Anguiano has extensive experience in educational research and evaluation. His professional interests are rooted in his passion to ensure that every child has equitable access to high quality education. He believes that this is achievable by increasing the capacity of parents, educators, policymakers, and community members to collaborate and advocate for sustainable systemic changes in early childhood to post-secondary education. He uses his training in educational psychology to support parent leadership; design data collection methods and protocols that are age, developmentally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate for children and youth from diverse backgrounds; and evaluate and enhance family, school, and community partnerships. He also has expertise in multimedia learning curricula and classroom assessment.

Jessie Tartanian
Director, Data & Evaluation, Family League of Baltimore
Jessie has over 15 years of experience with evaluating youth development, food systems, perinatal health, and family support programs in NYC and Baltimore. Jessie loves supporting practitioners to measure their impact and find new ways to make our communities healthier and more just places to live and learn. Her special evaluation interest is data visualization, especially handmade soft viz gaining popularity in feminist data nerd circles. She and her family live in Baltimore County. She is a BAE program Committee member and former board member.

➡️ Please note BAE does not allow AI notetakers in our webinars.
➡️ Click here to register to attend on Zoom! ⬅️
Enjoy BAE events and webinars? Help us continue to host great events like this by donating $5. We truly appreciate your support!
