Yvonne is the Director of Learning & Evaluation at the Barr Foundation, a private foundation that focuses regionally on the Arts, Climate, and Education sectors in New England. As Director at Barr, she leads a team that supports the foundation’s commitment to ongoing strategic learning that centers equity and supports all grantmakers at Barr to develop evaluation approaches for their work and apply learning to programmatic strategies for greater impact. Previously, Yvonne served as Senior Program Officer, Measurement and Evaluation on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Success team where she led efforts to build evidence on interventions to improve the success for low-income, first-generation students and students of color.

Prior to philanthropy, Yvonne began her career in education, spending 14 years in a variety of evaluation and leadership roles at Duke University and Syracuse University and 5 years early in her career as a middle school math teacher. Her personal interests include volunteering with her family with community organizations that ensure dignity and support basic needs for all people and has also served on the Board of Directors for the Queen Anne Helpline in Seattle, which provides emergency assistance for housing, food, and basic needs. She is a proud alumna of St. John’s College, Annapolis and holds a M.S. in Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation with a concentration in applied research from the School of Education at Syracuse University.