Jara Dean-Coffey, MPH

Founder & Director

For the past twenty-five years, Jara has worked at the intersections of values, context, strategy and evaluative thinking to align practices to be in service of equity, justice and liberation.

She is the President and CEO of jdcPARTNERSHIPS, where she develops new approaches, advises people, efforts, and organizations, and sparks conversation and curiosity through things like her own musings and machinations. Jara is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Institute for Health Improvement, and on the boards of Equity in the Center and Collective Impact Lab.

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Jara, co-authored Raising the Bar: Cultural Competence and Equity - Equitable Evaluation (2014) that led to funding for the two-year Equitable Evaluation Project in partnership with the Center for Evaluation Innovation and Johnson Center for Philanthropy. This exploration affirmed both the need and appetite for elevating and advancing EEF™ practice within the US philanthropic sector.