Founded in 2017 by Linda Lu, Evaluation Studio (ES) began as a bold experiment in what it means to center lived experiences, community, creativity, and justice in research, design, and planning. From the outset, ES disrupted traditional frameworks—infusing research with feminist and post colonial principles, participatory methods, and a commitment to generative learning and strategic design.

As a firm led by women of color, our lived experiences shaped how we approached impact: not just as outcomes to measure, but as stories to understand, design for, and build with. We believed that research and strategy were not neutral tools, but opportunities for connection, meaning-making, and transformation.

In 2018 and 2019, Shwetha Sridharan and Irina Nuñez joined the team, deepening Evaluation Studio’s capacity in strategic facilitation, community building, participatory research, and youth engagement. Together, they advanced tools for collaborative analysis and collective meaning-making. Irina’s leadership helped solidify ES’s identity as a hub for youth- and community-led research, expanding participatory practices and co-leading projects grounded in the lived experiences of those most impacted.

By 2020, Evaluation Studio had built out a robust strategic planning and facilitation practice—applying participatory values to support organizations through reflection, adaptive planning, and culture-shifting design. Our research model scaled alongside this work, integrating capacity-building with justice-driven learning. We were partnering with a growing roster of clients, including Deloitte’s Courageous Principals, Alliance for Girls, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, and United Way Bay Area—helping them integrate liberatory research and strategy into diverse-range of initiatives focused on education, gender justice and community development.

From 2021 to 2022, Evaluation Studio entered a period of creative expansion. We trained clients and partners in tools for community meaning-making, designed and facilitated community learning exchanges, and redefined how impact and evaluation could be understood—through storytelling, intersectional analysis, and values-based learning frameworks. Reina Rodrìguez joined as a participatory research assistant to support a growing portfolio of projects including work with United Way of Greater Cleveland and the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, while Cimone Satele brought skills and capacity to refine our offerings and expand our reach in evaluation.

Throughout our evolution, we rejected extractive models and pioneered learning frameworks that responded to the needs of organizations doing bold, progressive work. We co-developed experimental cohorts and learning systems that helped organizations understand, adapt, and evolve their strategies in real time.

We also became known for designing innovative data collection methods—responding to the erasure of underserved communities in conventional research. Our intersectional instruments wove together logic and feeling, integrating sensory and emotional dimensions into traditional research instruments like surveys, interviews, and community listening sessions. We presented these approaches to clients and funders like Blue Shield of California Foundation, Girls Leadership, and the Levine Impact Lab—strengthening the field’s ability to surface insights around gender-based violence, healing, and leadership in girls and gender-expansive youth of color.

In 2023, Evaluation Studio integrated with Alliance for Girls (AFG)—a strategic move to bring its research and learning models in-house. The acquisition allowed for deeper integration of feminist research methods and community power-building within one of the nation’s largest gender justice alliances.

Today, the legacy of Evaluation Studio continues through the people it has worked with and the practices and principles it has cultivated—showing up in every participatory process and prompt, every community-centered meaning making session and learning exchange, and every radical act of research that socially, historically, and spiritually locates lived experience as centers of knowledge creation.