Leslie Goodyear Honored with Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award

EDC’s Leslie Goodyear is the 2025 recipient of the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA’s) Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award. Named for two Nobel Prize winners, the highly prestigious award is presented to an evaluator who conducts evaluations of the highest possible quality and utility, whose work is consistent with the AEA Guiding Principles for Evaluators, and who has had a substantial and sustained influence on evaluation practice.

“I am truly honored and humbled to receive this award,” Leslie Goodyear said. “Evaluation practice is a relational endeavor, and I am grateful to have the chance to partner with insightful and innovative AEA and EDC colleagues and, together, use evaluation to help programs improve and make the world better.”

In announcing the award, the AEA selection committee noted Goodyear’s distinguished               career grounded in both practice and service to the field, stating, “We were especially taken with [Goodyear’s] significant contributions to evaluation practice at the national level, especially through leadership roles in federal evaluation and philanthropy, her instrumental role in revising AEA’s Guiding Principles and promoting evaluator ethics, and a deep commitment to mentoring, capacity-building, and elevating evaluation as a profession.”

At EDC, Goodyear specializes in evaluating education initiatives and facilitating evaluation capacity-building initiatives. In addition to her evaluation work, Goodyear has hosted and mentored 15 early-career evaluators who were part of AEA’s GEDI Program, made significant contributions to EDC’s evaluation work, and now hold key positions in the field.

Goodyear has served in many leadership roles in AEA, including as AEA president in 2018, as an AEA board member, and as associate editor for the American Journal of Evaluation. For three years, she was a program officer at the National Science Foundation, where she commissioned evaluations and built institutional capacity to use evaluations.

In nominating Goodyear for the award, Katrina Bledsoe, a partner at Strategic Learning Partners for Innovation, highlighted Goodyear’s core conviction that evaluation must be a collaborative effort.

“Leslie’s strength is in building the capacity of people to work well with evaluators and evaluation,” wrote Bledsoe. “She excels at bringing clients, communities, and evaluators together, with the understanding that evaluation is most successful when all involved are working together.”

“Leslie’s commitment to making evaluation a rigorous, highly effective, and collaborative process has shaped EDC’s evaluation practice for two decades,” said Siobhan Murphy, EDC Chief Executive Officer. “Through her expertise, energy, and engagement, she makes the field of evaluation accessible to colleagues and partners. She is such a worthy recipient of this prestigious award.”

The Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award celebrates two giants in the social sciences. Alva Myrdal was a Swedish psychologist, educator, and politician. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982 for her long-standing and distinguished advocacy for nuclear disarmament. Her husband, Gunnar Myrdal, was an economist and sociologist who advocated for democracy and the importance of a social safety net. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974.

We invite you to learn more about EDC’s Research & Evaluation work and the American Evaluation Association.