Staff

Photo: Audrey  Cooper

Audrey Cooper

Director of the UNM Evaluation Lab

Email: 
aleanos@unm.edu

Audrey Cooper is the Director of the Evaluation Lab. Audrey is a Registered Nurse with a Master's in Public Health from UNM concentrating in Systems, Services, and Policy. She has over a decade of non-profit health care experience in clinical quality, evaluation, heath policy, and health center management. Audrey's evaluation interests center on cultivating joy in the professional setting, identifying what really matters, using evaluation to create and inform policy, and practicing justice in all settings. 

Photo: Ranjana Damle

Ranjana Damle

Summer Institute Facilitator and Evaluator

Email: 
damle@unm.edu

Ranjana has a doctorate in sociology. She has experience in PreK-12 education research and evaluation. Her interests include education policy, and equity and inclusion in education. She has worked on evaluation of social programs supported by federal, state, city, or private funding. Ranjana worked as a researcher/evaluator at Albuquerque Public Schools and as Research Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico Center for Education Policy Research, before she retired in May 2018. Post retirement, Ranjana has established a consultancy called Mainspring Evaluation, LLC, to work mainly with non-profits. 

Photo: Claudia Diaz Fuentes

Claudia Díaz Fuentes

Team Lead and Summer Institute Facilitator

Email: 
claudiadf@unm.edu
Claudia Díaz-Fuentes received her PhD from the Pardee RAND Graduate School and is an Assistant Professor for the College of Population Health. Her research focused on inter-vivos transfers, particularly in evaluating the motives associated to permanency of financial transfers and their role in old age income security. Her health research has focused on utilization and access to care among Spanish-speaking Hispanics in the United States. In particular, her interests include the role of the demand for screening and treatment of several prevalent conditions among Hispanics, such as mental health illnesses, breast cancer and musculoskeletal and respiratory illnesses, and the long-term impact of these conditions on income security. Claudia started teaching introductory economics and intermediate microeconomics in her home country (El Salvador), where she also recently taught time series econometrics. Her teaching interests also include health, development and labor economics.
Photo: Kevin Estes

Kevin Estes

Team Lead

Email: 
kmestes@salud.unm.edu
Dr. Estes is an Research Assistant Professor at the UNM Prevention Research Center. He is an applied microeconomist interested in the intersection of labor, education, and health. His research has included analyses of public policies from early childhood to post-secondary education. He completed his bachelors of business administration in finance at New Mexico State University and his doctoral studies in economics at the University of New Mexico.
Photo: Emily Guerra

Emily Guerra

Team Lead

Email: 
e.guerra@apexeval.org

Emily is an Evaluator with Apex Evaluation, a technology and consulting firm that specializes in collecting credible evidence to build, share, test, and evolve mental models. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology (Sociocultural concentration) from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP); a Master’s in Anthropology (Ethnology concentration); and Master’s in Public Health (Community Health Intervention concentration), both from the University of New Mexico.

In her evaluation practices, Emily is mainly interested in understanding if anyone is better off because of their involvement in the program or organization. She uses Systems Learning to look toward the larger societal, political, and economic structures that affect our communities; and data to tell the stories of what our project partners are doing and how that impacts our communities. Centering the voices and perspectives of different stakeholders is a key part of Emily’s evaluation practice, as people just want to feel heard and listened to.

Outside of work, Emily enjoys reading from (and adding to) the pile of books next to her desk, or daydreaming about the next trip she is going to take.

Photo: Charla Orozco

Charla Orozco

Summer Institute Facilitator

Email: 
cehenley@unm.edu
Charla Orozco is currently employed as an Institutional Researcher in the Office of Institutional Analytics at the University of New Mexico. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Roanoke College in Spanish Literature and Business Administration (2014). She is also a graduate of UNM with Masters degrees in Latin American Studies (2016) and Cybersecurity & Business Analytics (2022). Charla began working with the Evaluation Lab as a graduate student and fellow in 2015 and has continued on in various capacities, learning beside many great students, faculty, and non-profit organizations.
Photo: Emma Tomingas-Hatch

Emma Tomingas-Hatch

Unit Administrator

Email: 
etomingashatch@unm.edu
Phone: 
5052771546

Emma Tomingas-Hatch is the Unit Administrator for the Evaluation Lab, the Master of Public Policy, and the Race & Social Justice Certificate program. She has a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico and an M.A. in Folklore from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.