Co-Designing for Equity—Antiracist Practice in Research and Evaluation

Explore how antiracist principles can lead to stronger research, more meaningful partnerships, and smarter service delivery. Drawing from on-the-ground experience, real policy implementation, and the behavioral science insights in Antiracist by Design, uncover a framework and practical tools for advancing equity through evidence.

Experience the Event

Presented by

Featured Speakers:

Carrie Cihak, King County Evidence & Impact Officer
Laura Feeney, Co-Executive Director, J-PAL
Matthew Freedman, Professor of Economics, UC Irvine and LEO Affiliated Researcher
Sunny Giron, Executive Director, The Community Café Collaborative
Crystal C. Hall, co-author of Antiracist by Design and Professor, University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy
Anne McNair, Senior Social Research Scientist, Best Starts for Kids (King County, WA)

Partner with LEO

The Evidence Matters series is sponsored on ThinkND by the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO). Poverty is stubborn and requires the utmost collaboration of thought and action to drive change. People of goodwill must bring their unique strengths and positions together to solve this problem. At LEO, we believe knowledge has to be combined with action. But poverty can’t be solved by just one person, or even one sector. That’s why we bring together innovative social service provider partners, top-tier academics, philanthropists, policymakers, and others to tackle poverty.

Change is possible. And with your action, we can get one step closer to reducing poverty in our country, together.

Your job is to act. What will you do?

For more information, please visit LEO’s website.

Carrie S. Cihak is the King County Evidence & Impact Officer. In this role, Carrie develops external partnerships that expand research and evaluation capacity to help county agencies advance equity and augment the positive impact of King County’s work. Carrie also develops partnerships to highlight successful practices and lessons that may be of value to other departments and jurisdictions.

Carrie has worked at King County for more than 20 years. Before joining DES, Carrie built research partnerships and evidence-building practices at King County Metro. Other positions included serving as Executive Constantine’s Policy Director and working on the County Council’s central staff.

Before joining King County, Carrie worked for The White House Council of Economic Advisers, taught economics at The College of William & Mary, and worked in the public education system in Japan. Carrie has a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in economics from Boston University.

Outside of work, Carrie is happiest when making pie, knits, new friends, and good trouble. Carrie and partner, George, live in central Seattle with three cats adopted from Regional Animal Services of King County.

Meet the Speaker: Laura Feeney

Laura Feeney is Co-Executive Director of J-PAL North America. Together with Vincent Quan, her Co-Executive Director, Laura leads the office’s efforts to reduce poverty by ensuring policy is informed by rigorous evidence in the North America region. Laura provides strategic direction to the finance, operations, and research teams. She works closely with researchers in efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of randomized evaluations and promote best practices in research implementation.

Prior to her role as Co-Executive Director, Laura led J-PAL North America’s research and training teams. She has extensive experience in the design, implementation, and analysis of randomized evaluations, working on projects across sector areas including workforce development, homelessness and housing, social welfare, and public health. Synthesizing lessons learned in implementing research designs in real-world contexts, she led the publication of the J-PAL North America Evaluation Toolkit, and a guide to acquiring and using administrative data for research. She oversaw the launch and management of critical research programs that have shaped how the research community conducts randomized evaluations, including the launch of the Research Management Support program.

Before joining J-PAL, Laura worked with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), where she analyzed data from randomized evaluations relating to public health and migration, Shoulder to Shoulder, where she conducted public health research in rural Honduras, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. She holds an MA in Economics from the University of British Columbia and a BA in Economics from the University of Florida.

Meet the Speaker: Matthew Freedman

Matthew Freedman is a Dean’s Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Irvine. He is also a co-editor at Regional Science and Urban Economics. His primary research interests are in urban economics, public finance, and labor economics. His work has also addressed topics in environmental economics and the economics of crime. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland-College Park.

For the 2025-26 academic year, Matthew Freedman is a Visiting Professor in the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also an affiliated researcher with Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities.

Meet the Speaker: Sunny Giron

Sunny Giron is the Executive Director of the Community Café Collective. She leverages her nonprofit background to support the organization and is proud to be part of a team dedicated to advancing social justice and systemic change by strengthening families. The mission of the Community Café Collective is strengthening families and communities by sparking the leadership and relationships needed to create more inclusive and equitable systems.

Meet the Speaker: Crystal C. Hall

Crystal Hall joined the faculty of Evans School of Public Policy & Governance at the University of Washington in 2008, and currently serves as the John and Marguerite Walker Corbally Endowed Professor in Public Service. Her courses include Quantitative Analysis, Psychology for Policy Analysis, Intergroup Relations for Public Policy, and Race and Equity for Policy and Governance.

Her research explores decision making in the context of poverty, using the methods of social and cognitive psychology, along with behavioral economics. This work has had a particular focus on financial decision making and economic opportunity for low-income families. In addition to broadening the theoretical understanding of the behavior of this population, her work has also explored new ways of incorporating these insights into policy design and implementation. She has a record of serving government agencies at the local, state, and federal level – including having served as a Fellow on the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team and the Federal Office of Evaluation Sciences at the General Services Administration.
Professor Hall holds an appointment as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology in the University of Washington Department of Psychology. She is also an Academic Affiliate of ideas42, an Affiliated Scientist of the Behavioral Change for Good Initiative, and a Faculty Affiliate at both the University of Washington’s West Coast Poverty Center (WCPC) and Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE).

In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Hall has provided guidance and training to community organizations, nonprofits, and government agencies seeking to implement tools from psychology and behavioral economics into the design and delivery of their programs and services. She holds a PhD and MA in Psychology from Princeton University. In addition, she holds a BS from Carnegie Mellon University in both Decision Science and Policy and Management.

Meet the Speaker: Anne McNair, MPH

Ann McNair, MPH is a senior social research scientist with the Best Starts for Kids initiative in King County, WA, and is a co-lead for their data and APDE qualitative teams.

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