Honing strategy and measuring success in order to maximize the impact of social services for low income communities.
Honing strategy and measuring success in order to maximize the impact of social services for low income communities.
"Diana is tenacious and creative in her approach, disciplined and expansive in her thinking -- all critically valuable qualities in a researcher. We brought on Diana to help with a project that needed a lot of help to define, before we could even get started. Diana patiently but strategically overturned all the rocks that needed examination, and guided us toward a feasible evaluation plan that maximized the best elements of our available data, and contextualized the challenging aspects. She is unflappable in the face of obstacles, while realistic about what's possible. She's also a delight to work with!"
“I had the privilege of working with Diana at the SF-Marin Food Bank for 5 years. During that time, I witnessed first hand how skillfully and humbly she approaches her work - even with the thorniest of problems we were trying to solve, she brought her intuitive analytical perspective, asked the right questions, and presented complicated data in ways that helped the whole team to drive towards a collective vision. She also manages relationships gracefully, and can navigate challenges and differences of opinion with compassion and persistence. Not only are her skills in data analysis, research, and advocacy top notch, but she's also an absolute joy to work with, and always brings her can-do attitude and sense of humor. Any organization would be truly lucky to work with her.”
“Diana is a truly unique blend of an analytical, critical thinker and an intuitive empath. She excels at planning and facilitating challenging strategic conversations across and within stakeholder groups. I have seen her approach seemingly intractable problems with both creativity and realism. Her experience tackling broad systems-wide problems coupled with her quantitative skills, particularly in producing user-friendly, approachable data dashboards, would make her an asset to any project or organization.”
“I've had the privilege of partnering with Diana over the past two years on WIATT, a project where we sought to understand the wellbeing impacts from urban development projects on local communities. I was consistently impressed by her unique combination of talents -- Diana brings a razor-sharp analytical mind to every challenge, deep technical expertise, and was always asking great questions or offering ideas that made our work better.
But what truly set Diana apart is how she bridges the gap between technical expertise and practical application. She doesn't just understand complex data systems -- she transforms that knowledge into actionable insights and can communicate them in a way that moves nonprofits and government forward. For example, Diana helped design and facilitate our local sense-making sessions where she masterfully distilled survey themes and Census data into clear visualizations, engaged residents + city planners in deep discussion about what the data meant, and co-created an action plan for how to move forward.
Diana is a joy to work with and I wholeheartedly recommend her for any role requiring technical depth, analytical rigor, and the human touch needed to bring together data + community + program leaders to transform social service outcomes.”
“I had the opportunity to work with Diana while serving on the San Francisco LGBT Aging Policy Task Force. Diana worked closely with Task Force leadership team to develop data-grounded recommendations. Diana's ability to connect with Task Force members, to understand the complex issues of health disparities and inequities faced by San Francisco's LGBT older adults, and to provide the leadership team with a clear understanding of the scope and limitations of presented data assisted the Task Force in framing and shaping the final recommendations. The successful implementation of the Task Force's recommendations by the City of San Francisco can be said to be due, in large part, to Diana's consultation. You would be well served to have Diana as a consultant to your team.”
“I had the absolute privilege of working with Diana to prepare our county for a tremendous policy change. She had the foresight to start planning early and she thoughtfully engaged myriad stakeholders to do the same. Diana is deeply analytical, collaborative, and committed to solving the toughest problems society faces. Ultimately, her leadership resulted in our county’s successful implementation of this new policy, and I learned volumes from supporting her through this planning process.”
“Diana is great to work with. She can take your team's ideas and develop them well into a comprehensive, professional survey or project report. She is very thorough and detail oriented, but also has creative solutions. Hire her!”
“I’ve had the privilege of working with Diana for […] four years in my role with the Alliance to Transform CalFresh. Diana provided strong leadership for our group and helped us advance our work and knowledge by sharing her expertise in data, research, visionary thinking, and engaging and empowering stakeholders. Diana is an excellent thought partner and is able to take a cloud of possibilities and identify the ones most likely to meet intended goals and purposes. She’s able to suss out possible pitfalls, explore any tricky aspects of an idea and consider ways to mitigate them. […] Diana’s experience with research, data, and analysis have produce vital information and advocacy tools for our group. Her data visualizations have been used across the state and were a model for CDSS’s own data visualization tool. Before she left her most recent role, she created summaries for four of our priority areas that provide a clear vision of the progress we’d made in our efforts, the important things that she’s gleaned from the data, and insightful next steps to continue to advance our efforts. Overall, Diana is highly-skilled, easy-to-work with; she brings a forward-thinking perspective and generousness in sharing her knowledge. I strongly recommend her!”