Hallie Preskill

Managing Director hallie.preskill@fsg.org

Overview

For more than 20 years, Hallie has provided evaluation and organizational learning services and training workshops for healthcare, nonprofit, education, foundation, government, and corporate organizations.

Role at FSG

Hallie leads a team of experienced FSG consultants who provide evaluation expertise over a wide range of topic areas, including, women’s health, economic development, youth and education, and human rights. Hallie guides clients on planning and conducting evaluations, designing evaluation and performance measurement systems, building evaluation capacity, and facilitating organizational learning. She develops tools, resources, guides, articles, and books that help the field grow and learn how to do more relevant, credible, and useful strategic evaluations.

Before FSG

Prior to joining FSG in 2009, Hallie held academic positions at three different universities, where she taught courses in program evaluation, organizational learning, Appreciative Inquiry, consulting, and training. She received the American Evaluation Association’s Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Outstanding Professional Practice in 2002 and the University of Illinois Distinguished Alumni Award in 2004. In 2007, she served as President of the American Evaluation Association. 

Education

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, PhD, Evaluation and Training
• MA, Elementary and Special Education
• BA, Spanish

Affiliations

• American Evaluation Association (since 1983, President 2007)
• American Journal of Evaluation, Editorial Board Member
• Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, Editorial Board Member
• CAPTURE International, Advisory Board Member
• Foundation Review, Editorial Board Member
• IS-BBB, Nonprofit Effectiveness Advisory Group Member
• Social Innovation Fund, Technical Working Group Member

On Working at FSG

“I am at FSG because it is a true learning organization fully dedicated to doing what is right and good, and in ways that respect and honor both clients and our staff. Being at FSG allows us to explore the intersection of strategy and evaluation, which creates exciting possibilities for achieving social impact goals. After spending 22 years in academia, I decided to return to working more directly with organizations that cared about improving the lives of others. While I always hoped I was making a difference through my teaching, research, and writing, I knew I wanted to make a different kind of difference. At FSG, I have the privilege of overseeing the Strategic Learning and Evaluation Center, through which we design and implement evaluations, evaluation systems, workshops, webinars, and organizational learning processes, in addition to building the field’s evaluation knowledge.”

Publications

• Community-Based Philanthropy and the Knight Community Information Challenge (2010)
• Practical Guide for Engaging Stakeholders in Developing Evaluation Questions (2009)
• Communicating Education Metrics (2009)
• Becoming the Change: What One Organization Working To Transform Educational Systems Learned About Team Learning and Change. Babiera, R. & Preskill, H. (2011). The Ball Foundation. Available at www.amazon.com.
• Evaluation in organizations: A systematic approach to enhancing learning, performance and change. Russ-Eft, D. & Preskill, H. (2009). 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Perseus Books
• Reframing evaluation through appreciative inquiry. Preskill, H. and Catsambas, T. (2006). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
• Building evaluation capacity: 72 activities for teaching and training. Preskill, H. & Russ-Eft, D. (2005) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
• Evaluation strategies for communicating and reporting: Enhancing learning in organizations. Torres, R. T, Preskill, H. & Piontek, M. E. (2005). 2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
• Evaluative inquiry for learning in organizations. Preskill, H. & Torres, R. T. (1999). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
• Museum Evaluation without Borders: Four Imperatives for Making Museum Evaluation More Relevant, Credible, and Useful. Preskill, H. (in press). The Curator
• Learning from an adaptive-consultative approach: One foundation’s experience in creating systems change in education. Gopalakrishnan, S. & Preskill, H. (in press). Foundation Review
• Exploring effective strategies for facilitating evaluation capacity building. In, From policies to results: The role of country evaluation capacity, UNICEF. Preskill, H. & Boyle, S. (2010)
• Reflections on the dilemmas of environmental evaluation. Preskill, H. (2009), Jossey-Bass. New Directions for Evaluation
• A conceptual model of evaluation capacity building: A Multidisciplinary perspective. Preskill, H. & Boyle, S. (2008). American Journal of Evaluation, 29 (4), 443-459
• Evaluation’s second act: A Spotlight on learning. Preskill, H. (2008). American Journal of Evaluation, 29 (2), 127-138