Sally Leiderman is President of the non-profit Center for Assessment and Policy Development. She is an experienced evaluator of efforts aimed at reducing institutional racism, supporting racial equity or building more inclusive communities, including Project Change; the Bridging Initiative of the National Capitol Region; Communities Creating Racial Equity; Communities for All Ages; the Americans for Indian Opportunity Ambassadors Program and others. Ms. Leiderman co-created www.racialequitytools.org and www.evaluationtoolsforracialequity.org.

People engaged in racial justice work face considerable pressure to provide evidence that their organization’s particular approach makes a tangible difference in people’s lives. The pressure comes from their own sense of urgency, from their constituents and from funders. Many people who fund this work are under similar pressure, sharing that sense of urgency, having to account for their decisions, and, like practitioners, wanting to structure future decisions based on evidence that the work is creating improvements. Evaluation sits right at the nexus of these similar and sometimes competing pressures.

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