Co-Investigator Spotlight: Dr. Leslie Fierro

Co-investigator Spotlight
D R . L E S L I E F I E R R O
Written by Jenae Gauthier (Undergraduate Research Intern)
July 2022
"I think the best and the most important
role, for evaluation is helping people to
learn from the things that they do well,
and the places where they can improve.
It has so much power in that space.”
In a recent interview with Dr. Leslie Fierro, she
shares about her education, career path, and
personal experiences with evaluation. Dr. Fierro,
originally from Windsor Canada, moved to
California at a young age where she completed a
Bachelor of Arts at Pitzer College and a Master’s
in Public Health with a double major in
Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Loma Linda
University. She then went on to pursue her Ph.D.
at Claremont Graduate University in Evaluation
and Applied Research Methods.
Journey to discovering Evaluation
Dr. Fierro discovered a passion for evaluation while
working in the U.S.Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s National Asthma Control Program. She
worked part-time on the epidemiology team and
with the team that managed grants for the state
health departments, acting as a liaison between the
two teams. In this role, she was asked to help
develop an evaluation technical assistance
document for the program – the specific ask was to
write up a section on how to “gather credible
evidence.” Dr. Fierro recognized that she had
substantial experience collecting and analyzing
data for public health program planning and
research purposes, but realized through this
experience that evaluation was different from the
specific type of work she had done in the past.
“I was super intrigued by
evaluation, but I didn’t really know
anything about it. (laughs) I wasn’t
educated in evaluation at that
point, I never had a class in
program evaluation. So I started
looking around to see if evaluation
was actually ‘a thing.’ I wondered -
iIs this a profession? And I found
the American Evaluation
Association, and I started looking
into what academic programs there
were and I found Claremont
Graduate University. I got my
undergraduate degree about 10
feet from this school, and I just had
no idea that evaluation even
existed. So then I reached out, and
I started talking to people at CGU,
like Stewart Donaldson and Tina
Christie. And then the rest is
history…Like most evaluators, I just
fell into it.”

Has your background in biology, epidemiology and biostatistics been helpful in
some of the current positions that you hold and within the field of Evaluation?
“I think those degrees have helped me with thinking about measurement and really
understanding what high quality valid measures look like, and the nuances that come into play
around data collection. However, they have also created some challenges for me as an
evaluator. For instance, I'm not as inclined as some others in the profession to immediately
think about social justice and evaluation’s role in this, I’m not as inclined to think about how
people construct knowledge based upon their own realities. With biology and epidemiology,
there's this idea of one truth and one way: you get at this through systematic investigation, and
primarily quantitative data. So I think this heavy focus on using a technical lens was, in a sense,
embedded in me through my training – as a result, it became my go to.
Don’t get me wrong, methods are super important, and I keep that with me, but how do I
sensitize myself to making sure that my work is culturally responsive? That I'm looking for
inequities that are present? How do I make sure that I'm doing an evaluation where there's
enough engagement so that it's more likely that the findings are going to be used? So I think
that that's been a journey for me, and it continues to be a journey. I have to enhance my other
skill set very intentionally. And sometimes that can be by virtue of making sure that I'm working
with people who are more inclined to look at things from a social justice lens. So by coupling
myself with members on a team who have a “go to” that is a little bit different than mine, it
helps me to kind of build those muscles as well.”
Dr. Fierro’s research and practice focuses on evaluation capacity building. She has examined
evaluation education - specifically how individuals within the U.S. pursuing a master’s in public
health are trained in evaluation . She has also explored how to measure evaluation capacity in
organizations the evaluation marketplace, and, most recently, conducted research examining the
development and implementation of evaluation policies in U.S. government agencies.
Why is Evaluation important?
“I think evaluation can be a super effective
tool for learning. I understand that lots of
people view evaluation as an accountability
mechanism, and it's important to be
accountable. It's important to be accountable
for public funds… but I don't actually think
that's the best role for evaluation. I think the
best role and the most important role for
evaluation is helping people to learn from the
things that they do well, and the places where
they can improve. It just has so much power
in that space…”
An exercise Dr. Fierro conducts with her students
is to have them draw or find an image that
represents evaluation (from Russ-Eft & Preskill
(2004) Building Evaluation Capacity: 72 Activities
for Teaching and Training). Individuals often
choose images that focus on the measurement
aspect of evaluation, such as sitting in front of a
computer, a graph, a checklist or a ruler. They
view evaluation as this detached, highly technical
act that is quantitative in nature.

“We bring that technical piece to the
table for sure, and hopefully some
means of helping to reduce bias. But at
the same time, we're doing that in the
service of something. And so, it's sad to
me that that's what somebody sees an
evaluator as, because it couldn't be any
further from what we're actually
supposed to be doing, I suppose.”
Dr. Fierro feels it is important to educate
people to understand the learning function
of evaluation. To illustrate this, she
described an image of a forest with a path
going through it towards light from the sun
that is shining through the trees. For her,
evaluation is a journey to understand
something, to make improvements along the
way, in order to reach the shining light at the
end.
“Mel Mark, Gary Henry, and George Julnes
wrote a textbook on evaluation quite some
time ago (Evaluation: An Integrated
Framework for Understanding, Guiding, and
Improving Policies and Programs (2000)) and in
it they talk about the ultimate purpose of
evaluation being social betterment. And I
really fall in line with that. Lots of people kind
of get their head wrapped around this idea of
use and use being kind of like the ultimate
goal of evaluations. But it's not the ultimate
goal of evaluation. You want people to use
information in the service of something
bigger. …You want them to use the evaluation
findings so they make programs and policies
better, their own practices better and do more
of the things that are working. And, if they do
that, they will effect positive change in society
that we collectively value – climate, health,
education, housing, equity and so on.”
Partnership with the Evaluation Capacity Network
“I'm really excited about the ECN and I think it has been a great collaboration so far. It has
definitely benefited my students as we've gotten to do research that we otherwise just
would not have carved out time to do that I think is really going to benefit the evaluation
community. It's certainly benefited each of us who's been on the team, we've learned a
lot, and I think it'll help with our individual practices as well.
I just want to give a shout out to ECN and particularly to Rebecca, who has continued to
maintain a very rich and engaged partnership despite all of the really horrendous
challenges that we've all been presented with over the last couple of years. I'm just super
thankful to be part of this and I'm excited to see where we continue going with this.”

Stay Tuned for the Max Bell School of
Public Policy’s Inaugural Case
Challenge on Strengthening Evaluative
Systems!
With generous support from Dr. Sydney Duder,
Dr. Fierro plans to host an evaluation case
competition in late April 2023. Cross-disciplinary
teams of current graduate students, and recent
graduates residing in Canada or the U.S. will be
tasked with solving an evaluation puzzle
focused specifically on evaluation capacity
building. This case challenge differs from other
evaluation case competitions in that students
will not be tasked with building an evaluation
plan that could subsequently be used to carry
out an evaluation. Rather, the teams will be
presented with a situation in which there is a
need to support a more robust evaluation
function and they will need to create a plan or
design a specific strategy for a “client” to fill this
need.
Dr. Leslie Fierro currently holds the inaugural
Sydney Duder Professorship in Program
Evaluation in the Max Bell School of Public
Policy at McGill University
(https://www.mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/article/a
rticles/why-policymakers-need-programevaluation).
In this role she teaches evaluation
to passionate students who relocate to
Montreal from across the globe in pursuit of a
Master’s in Public Policy. Dr. Fierro is also the
incoming Chair for the Max Bell School’s
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee.
She is the Co-Editor in Chief of New Directions
for Evaluation and Associate Editor of English
articles for the Canadian Journal of Program
Evaluation. In addition to her role as a
professor, scholar and editor she engages in
consulting work primarily in the area of public
health evaluation and evaluation capacity
building.
To ensure participants are on the “same page”
about evaluation, they will be offered a suite of
evaluation training in advance of the case
challenge and will be provided with coaching
support. A panel of esteemed judges, including
a representative of the entity providing the
case, will provide feedback and select the
winning team.
The ECN is currently providing support for this
case challenge through membership
engagement. Specifically, alongside Leslie
Fierro, Isabelle Bourgeois, Rebecca Gokiert,
Michelle Searle, and Melissa Tremblay comprise
the planning committee for the case challenge.
Leslie encourages anyone from the ECN who
has an interest in the case challenge, to reach
out to her or any of the planning committee
members for more information.