Kien S. Lee, Ph.D., Vice President of Consulting, leads the Community Science team in becoming the preeminent consulting team that provides research, evaluation, strategy, and capacity building expertise in matters related to community and systems change that center equity and social justice. Kien brings expertise in matters related to equity, inclusion, and cultural competency, as they pertain to strategies for health equity, immigrant integration, food security, civic engagement, and leadership development. She is also a trained and skilled facilitator in reflection, learning, and continuous strategy improvement processes. She has more than two decades of experience as a capacity builder, evaluator, and researcher to federal and local government agencies, foundations, and nonprofit organizations. She is seen as a thought leader in work that occurs at the nexus of evaluation and racial equity, and presents and writes extensively about how evaluation can be scientifically rigorous and supportive of racial equity at the same time. Kien’s commitment to bridge science, practice, and social change led to her appointment to Governor Martin O’Malley’s Commission to study the impact of immigration on Maryland and receiving the Distinguished Contributions to Practice in Community Psychology award and the Outstanding Evaluation of the Year award from the American Evaluation Association (in collaboration with David Chavis).
At Community Science, Kien provides strategic and technical direction for the evaluation of initiatives funded by national, regional, and statewide foundations and nonprofits, including the Anchor Collaborative for Racial Equity, Bush Foundation, Connecticut Health Foundation, Dogwood Health Trust, Living Cities, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Colorado Trust, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She also has experience providing evaluation and research support to federal agencies such as the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health (OMH) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. She is especially knowledgeable and skilled in the practice of mixed-methods and cross-case study.
Kien currently serves on the board of Welcoming America; in the past, she served on the boards of the Community Indicators Consortium and the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity. A focus of Kien’s work continues to be strengthening community capacity to use data, research, and evaluation to inform strategies to advance racial equity. To this end, she led the development of Kellogg Foundation’s evaluation handbook, The Step-by-Step Guide to Evaluation, and practice guide series Doing Evaluation in Service of Equity and its accompany toolkit. She also authored The Role of Culture in Evaluation and its sequel, The Journey Continues: Ensuring a Cross-Culturally Competent Evaluation (published by The Colorado Trust); Effecting Social Change in Diverse Contexts, a chapter in the textbook Community Psychology: Foundations for Practice. She has created workshops about monitoring and assessing change toward racial equity for a variety of audiences, including city mayoral staff and participants of conferences such as Alliance for Nonprofit Management, American Evaluation Association, Facing Race, Government for Alliance for Race and Equity (GARE), Govern for Impact, and Society for Community Research and Action.
Kien received her doctoral degree in Community Theory, Research, and Practice from The Union Institute under the tutelage of esteemed evaluation scholars Donna Mertens, Michael Quinn Patton, and Huey Chen, and community psychologists David Chavis and the late Donald Klein. In her spare time, Kien enjoys painting with acrylic, pastels, and watercolor; cooking; and visiting historical places around the world.
Notable Publications and Presentations
Lee, K., Ricci, C., & Ramirez, M. (2023). Reconciling philanthropy’s role in disruption and revolution: Hard lessons from a community-driven, power-building strategy to achieve health equity. The Foundation Review, 15 (4), 126-143.
Lee, K. (2023). No Matter What, Stay Aligned and Focused on the “E” in DEI. Keynote Presentation, Colorado Shared Risks and Protective Factors 7th Annual Conference, May 30-31, 2023, Frisco, Colorado.
Lee, K., Revels, M., & Ghosh, A. (2022). First Step toward Evaluation in Service of Racial Equity. Webinar for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, August 22, 2022.
Lee, K. & Krenn, H. (2021). Continuous Improvement in Service of Racial Equity: Linking Strategy, Evaluation, and Learning. GEO Learning Conference, May 24-26, 2021.
Lee, K. (2019). Key Considerations for Design and Evaluation of Leadership Programs with a Racial Equity and Social Justice Lens. Written for the Bush Foundation.
Wolff, T., Minkler, M., Wolfe, S., Berkowitz, B., Bowen, L., Butterfoss, F., Christens, B., Francisco, V., Himmelman, A., & Lee, K. (2017, January 9). Collaborating for equity and justice: Moving beyond collective impact. Nonprofit Quarterly. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/collaborating-equity-justice-moving-beyond-collective-impact/
Lee, K. & Gilbert, B. (2014). Embedding the Graduate Education Diversity Program within a larger system. New Directions in Evaluation, No. 143. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Lee, K. S., & Chavis, D. M. (2012). Cross-case methodology: Bringing rigor to community and systems change research and evaluation. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 22 (5): 428-438
Exemplary Projects
Evaluation Director and Technical Reviewer, Dogwood Health Trust’s Education Workforce Strategy.
Direct the evaluation of the foundation’s early childhood education workforce and out-of-school-time strategies in Western North Carolina, including the development of a theory of change and logic model and design and implementation of a monitoring and learning system.
Evaluation Director, Equity Fund & Partnerships Fund, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
Direct the developmental evaluation of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Equity and Partnerships Fund. Assist the foundation’s Partnerships Team to continuously reflect on their grantmaking practices and align with their aspirations for the two funds.
Evaluation Director, Community Partnerships for Health Equity (CPHE) Initiative, The Colorado Trust.
Directed the evaluation of the CPHE initiative designed to build power in frontier, rural, and urban communities across the state through a social determinants of health lens. Worked with foundation leadership and staff, partners, local evaluators, and resident team coordinators from participating communities to implement the evaluation and support continual learning and strategy improvement.
Evaluation Director, Racial Equity Anchor Collaborative, UnidosUS.
Responsible for supporting the Anchor’s project coordinator, evaluation committee, and stewards from nine anchor organizations (Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, Demos, Faith in Action, NAACP, National Congress of American Indians, National Urban League, Race Forward, The Advancement Project, UnidosUS) in the use of evaluation to inform their collective action to promote civic engagement and cross-racial collaboration.