Pete York, MSSA, Principal Associate, has over 20 years of experience as a consultant and researcher in the evaluation and nonprofit fields, as well as a national spokesperson for social impact and impact measurement issues. He has designed and led numerous research and evaluation studies with private philanthropies, corporations, nonprofit organizations and government agencies; examples include: the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Gap, Inc., the Philadelphia Zoo, the David & Lucille Packard Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, the California Endowment, the Center for Employment Opportunities, Camp Fire USA, YMCA of the USA, etc. He has authored book chapters, academic and professional articles, and a book on the topic of evaluation for philanthropists — “Funder’s Guide to Evaluation: Leveraging Evaluation to Improve Nonprofit Effectiveness“. He has spent the last five years developing analytic techniques that leverage machine learning algorithms and big data to create predictive and prescriptive models and tools for social change agents. He recently co-authored a book chapter on this work — “The Application of Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning to Risk Assessment in Juvenile Justice: The Florida Experience.” He is a popular speaker on evaluation, capacity building and data science/analytics, presenting regularly at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, the American Evaluation Association, the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, Data Analysts for Social Good, the National Volunteerism/Points of Light Conference, Monitoring Evaluation Research & Learning (MERL), and many more. Prior to joining Community Science, he was the principal designer of nationally-recognized assessment tools and automated, data-driven evaluation tools like the Core Capacity Assessment Tool (CCAT), the Service Enterprise Diagnostic (SED), the Impact Capacity Assessment Tool (iCAT), and the Youth Development impact Learning System (YDiLS). Peter serves/has served as an advisor or/member of social impact groups such as the Alliance for Effective Social Investing, Reimagining Service/Presidio Institute, Data Analyst for Social Good, the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, and the Social Innovation Fund. Peter has recently become a Leap Ambassador, a private community of nonprofit thought leaders who are committed to the adoption of high performance in the nonprofit sector.
In his spare time, Peter enjoys spending time with his wife and two children, exploring new places, drawing, painting and cooking together. He is also a meditator who believes strongly in the transformative benefits of maintaining a mindfulness practice.