Co-Investigator Spotlight: Dr. Leslie Fierro

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.