Evaluation that works.

Apex is a consulting firm specializing in Systems Learning™. For over twenty-five years, we have facilitated strategic planning, evaluation, and technical assistance for a wide range of initiatives. We align with partners addressing the wicked problems of poverty and income inequality, health and education disparities, and racism and discrimination. Our work has spanned early childhood and family supports, out-of-school time, bilingual and special education, school-based health, housing and food insecurity, and community schools.

Evaluation is at its best when it is in service of learning and equity – when it engages and is responsive to an inclusive set of perspectives, including those who hold decision-making power, those doing the work in the field, and those most affected by the work. Inclusion of these three essential perspectives encourages us to pose better questions, to more accurately acknowledge discrepancies in our collective knowledge, and to co-create more accessible, meaningful, and useful theories of change, data collection tools, and implementation plans. It fosters the humility and wisdom needed for shared and actionable learning.

Our Core Values

Learning

Learning is the process of building, sharing, testing, and evolving mental models. It implies action, not just an academic exercise.

Collaboration

We learn better when we share mental models. This requires trust, space, and opportunities to express conflicting viewpoints. We believe knowledge is built more effectively when collaboration includes diverse perspectives.

Excellence

We set high quality and accuracy standards that encompass our evaluation cycle. This affects our compliance practices for data security and the methods we use to produce accurate, inclusive, useful reports and deliverables.

Equity

We align ourselves with people, organizations, and programs that are working toward educational, health, economic, social, and racial equity. We define equitable evaluation as mindfulness of the role perspective plays in learning, including understanding how contexts, histories, and structures in society affect our partners and, therefore, our work as evaluators. We believe equity must permeate all aspects of our work, including business considerations.

Our commitment to equitable evaluation guides how we engage partners and community in sharing mental models, and the manner in which we facilitate learning from findings and decision-making about what to do next.

Innovation

We are not dogmatic about any particular theory or method and – unconstrained by a single methodology – we leverage the full creative capacity of our team and technologies. We are willing to test new ideas in the pursuit of breakthrough solutions for us, our partners, and the fields we serve.

Leadership

Everyone on the Apex team is a leader. Staff actively contribute to co-creating an organization we want to be a part of by cultivating a culture of safety, empowerment, and open dialogue. We champion the leadership of our partners in the field, supporting their efforts toward positive change as we provide meaningful reporting and informed thought-partnership.

Through this work, Apex has become a trusted voice in the evaluation industry. We lead conversations on operationalizing equity in our field and count ourselves among those who are trying new approaches, challenging convention, and taking more risks toward the promise of equitable evaluation.