Melissa Binder is the co-creator and former Associate Director of the Eval Lab. She also directs the UNM Master of Public Policy and is an Associate Professor of Economics. Melissa's research and policy interests include labor market and educational equity, and among her publications are analyses of the motherhood wage gap, gender equity in faculty pay, and the socio-economic achievement gap in higher education.

Audrey Cooper is the Associate 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. 

Charla Orozco is currently employed as an Institutional Researcher in the Office of Institutional Analytics at the University of New Mexico. She is also the Director for the monthly Evaluation Lab ECHO Learning Community. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Literature and Business Administration, earned through Roanoke College in May 2014. She is also a graduate of UNM with a Master’s in Latin American Studies (class of 2016), and she’s working on a Master’s in Cybersecurity and Business Analytics now through UNM’s Anderson School of Management. Charla began working with the Evaluation Lab as a graduate student and fellow in 2015. She’s worn several hats in the Evaluation Lab since then and enjoys getting to know new community organizations each year. When she’s not working, Charla enjoys spending time outdoors with her son Ezra, her husband Adrian, and her two dogs Lola and Romeo.

Emma Tomingas-Hatch is the Graduate Coordinator 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.

Laura Wzorek Pressley is an experienced cultural producer and arts administrator who has been at the helm of the not-for-profit organization CENTER in Santa Fe for over 15 years. CENTER’s mission is to support socially and environmentally engaged lens-based projects through education, funding, public platforms, and partnerships. In addition to producing high impact, outcome-driven programs, Ms. Wzorek Pressley has curated and produced exhibitions highlighting today’s critical issues, including The Dispossessed (2016), The Frontier (2016), Immigration, Migration & Evolving Boundaries (2015) Art & Oppression (2017),  Conjured Futures (2018) among others, collaborating with local and international venues. In addition to her role at CENTER, Laura most recently served on the Board of Directors of the Blue Earth Alliance as Vice-President and is a respite foster mom in Sandoval County, NM.