Barr Announces Director of Learning and Evaluation

After an extensive national search, the Barr Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Yvonne Belanger as its new director of learning and evaluation. Reporting to the vice president, Yvonne will work with Foundation leadership, program teams, and partners to develop and strengthen the Foundation’s approaches to gauge impact, learn from its work, and share and apply that learning. 

Yvonne Belanger

Yvonne comes to Barr from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where, since 2013, she partnered with program teams to develop evaluation frameworks and manage evaluations of innovative approaches to education under Gates’s Postsecondary Success Strategy. “Yvonne’s commitment to action-oriented evaluation aligns with our aspiration for a meaningful, actionable, and manageable approach to this work,” said Roger Nozaki, Barr’s vice president. Roger outlined the Foundation’s approach to learning and evaluation in a January blog post.

“Yvonne’s commitment to action-oriented evaluation aligns with our aspiration for a meaningful, actionable, and manageable approach to this work.” –Roger Nozaki

Yvonne’s experience in evaluation and research spans multiple sectors and roles. She spent five years as a middle school math educator, followed by more than a decade in higher education in a variety of research and administrative roles. At Syracuse University, she managed nationally-funded digital library projects and conducted research on digital reference services. As head of assessment for the Center for Instructional Technology at Duke University, her work included evaluations for the Duke Digital Initiative, the LINK Teaching and Learning Center, and the Duke iPod First Year Experience. She also created the first assessment department for Duke University Libraries.

Yvonne has served as a member of the board of directors of the Queen Anne Helpline, a nonprofit that provides emergency assistance for housing, food, and basic needs. She is an alumna of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation GearUp Leadership program, the National Science Foundation’s Summer Evaluation Institute, and UNC’s BRIDGES Academic Leadership Program.

We look forward to welcoming Yvonne to Boston and to Barr on September 1.