Meet the Team: Pilar Mendoza

Our Meet the Team blog series give you a glimpse into our team members' approach to working with our partners to achieve better results for communities. Today we’re getting to know senior consultant Pilar Mendoza.

1.    What is your role at Engage R+D?

I’m a Senior Consultant at Engage R+D. I partner with organizations working on complex systems change issues in multiple fields from early childhood education to criminal justice. My role is to listen and seek out stories of how people are working towards transformational change, and help people share these stories with others in the field. I do this, alongside my colleagues, by engaging people authentically, centering relationships, and creating innovative opportunities (both in-person and virtually) for people to be in community with each other. With listening comes the value of humility and valuing others’ expertise. So, I guess I’m really a professional listener.

2.    What experience do you bring to this work?

I believe I bring a unique vantage point to this work as I have an understanding of what it’s like to work inside nonprofits and in philanthropy. It was really my experience working with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation as a fellow that helped me understand not only how foundations work, but also how they partner with evaluators. This experience motivated me to become an evaluator. And throughout my career, no matter where I’ve worked, I’ve always sought opportunities to understand an issue (like criminal justice) from those with lived experience. That is probably the common thread that connects my own experiences. For example, while I worked at the Advancement Project, I essentially learned how to do evaluation but didn’t know it at the time. I was facilitating focus groups, meeting with community leaders, doing community assessments, drafting recommendations – the types of things I would do later as an evaluator and realized, ohhh, it was evaluation all along! This community-level work, with schools, community leaders, youth, violence interrupters, and law enforcement grounded me in terms of valuing diverse perspectives, prioritizing participatory methods, and engaging the community on issues that directly impact them.

3. Can you share something that motivates you?

I have worked on a lot of early learning projects. And with my mom being a preschool teacher, there’s a deep and personal connection there for me. I’ve grown up seeing my mother work with children and heard about her great and not-so-great experiences and her struggles with constantly changing curricula and priorities. There’s an early learning project in Fresno focused on supporting educators that work with multilingual learners ages 0-5.  Educators learn about common myths about English language learners, and strategies that support both English and home language development. One of the things motivating for me personally, through our evaluation work around the professional development of these educators was seeing how they started to feel valued in the field, particularly those who spoke a language other than English. It made people light up; they were bringing their expertise and experience, and their language and culture were being validated.

4. What excites you about evaluation right now?

I so appreciate having the opportunity to lead evaluation projects but to also be in conversation with the field especially now when there is momentum to imagine new ways of being. Where do we want to go in the future? In many ways, this moment feels like a call to action to develop something new. The Funder and Evaluator Network is a great example of how I’ve been able to support long-needed field-level conversations. And while FEAN is no longer active, there is still a need in the field for ongoing conversation in multiple spaces. I am excited by the willingness of other evaluators and funders to continue these energizing yet tough conversations about what it will take to transform how we think about evaluation and philanthropy, and how our field might better work together towards equity.

5. How are you taking care of yourself these days?

All things walking. I have incorporated walking into my workday by encouraging colleagues to join me on a walking meeting instead of being a Zoom zombie at our desks. If I’m feeling stuck or am having trouble thinking something through, then I know it’s time to go on a walk. It’s how I process and think. Walking also helps keep me grounded and present in the moment. I’ve taught myself to put away my headphones and instead focus on what’s around me. I’ve learned a lot more than I ever thought I would about my surroundings, especially the birds in my neighborhood and their different songs. I don’t miss my headphones at all!