Office of Evaluation Sciences Class Visit

Maya Duru and Julia Brown from the Office of Evaluation Sciences will join PA 888: Comparative and National Social Policy to discuss the work of the OES: how a federal evaluation team partners with agencies to test what works, generate actionable evidence, and improve public programs.

All students are invited to join.

About the event

The Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES) is an interdisciplinary team of evaluation experts at the U.S. General Services Administration. Its mission is to build and use evidence to better serve the public. OES works across government to help agencies improve the effectiveness and efficiency of federal programs: partnering to design rigorous evaluations, analyze administrative data, and produce findings that show what works, what does not, and what works best.

This event is in-person attendance only, and the presenters will join by Zoom. No registration required. Students not in PA 888 invited to join.

Maya Duru

Maya Duru leads evaluation work at OES and lectures in data science at UC Berkeley, where she teaches experiments and causal inference. She designs evaluations that answer immediate policy questions, with particular attention to antipoverty, including barriers to accessing government programs and workforce development. Before OES, she was Associate Director for Education at J-PAL at MIT. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from UC San Diego, an M.Sc. from UC Davis, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley.

Julia Brown

Julia Brown designs and implements rigorous evaluations with federal partners, including the IRS, Treasury, the Small Business Administration, USDA, FEMA, and GSA. She has also developed
training and tools that help federal Evaluation Officers carry out the Evidence Act, including learning agendas and evaluation plans. Before OES, she managed IPA’s U.S. Household Finance Initiative. She holds an M.I.A. from Columbia SIPA and a B.A. from Williams College.

Sponsor

This event is sponsored by the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs.

Contact

Mindy Walker at mindy.walker@wisc.edu