Senior Fellow - Learning and Evaluation, New Practice Lab
New America
Remote
Posted on Feb 11, 2025
The New Practice Lab is deeply committed to delivering on our north star: to improve benefits outcomes for 3 million Americans who belong to economically excluded families with children under six by the end of 2026. In early 2025, we are seeking to bring on a number of people excited to improve the way policy is made for American families by rolling up their sleeves, implementing a “new practice,” and learning in collaboration with community, private, nonprofit and public sector partners.
We approach our efforts differently than other teams - we are a mix of designers, researchers, policy experts, data scientists and technologists working to build a tighter link between policymakers, civil servants, and the families they serve, always with a rigorous focus on implementation. Our team is funded to provide no-cost teams to governments to improve benefits delivery such as income supports, care, and early education policies. We also convene practitioners across the country to learn from each other and inform better policy and program design.
Role Description
The Senior Fellow - Learning and Evaluation will serve as a senior member of the New Practice Lab Team working to identify and scope how the learning discipline is embedded into the work of all New Practice Lab efforts, driving the Lab’s approach to aligning its efforts to our north star impact measures, and working closely with our product, policy, design, data science, and engineering experts to improve the design and delivery of public benefits. The individual will work at the team level, supporting our internal learning agenda as we seek to improve our own effectiveness and progress toward our North Star, and also support work at the project level, embedding with sprint and design teams to apply rigorous learning expertise to the improvement of particular public benefits and programs.
Throughout this job description, the term “learning” is used to encompass evaluation activities, and to acknowledge that not every type of New Practice Lab effort will be well suited for a traditional “evaluation” activity as the method for assessing impact. We are a small and entrepreneurial team working with custom measures and often imperfect datasets. This is not a traditional program evaluation job. We seek a creative thinker who can design rigorous, formative learning strategies in data-constrained environments in ways that allow us to improve the quality of our work and insights as we go.
At a high level, some of the duties and responsibilities of this role will include:
The ideal candidate has demonstrated experience and success in:
This position is a full-time role with benefits. The annual salary is estimated to be between $140,000 – $180,000 and will account for commiserate experience. New America offers a highly competitive benefits package that includes health care, dental, and vision coverage; a generous retirement plan; paid time off; observes all federal holidays; and an office-wide closure between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Location
The position is remote and is open to candidates in North America.
Application Process
To be considered in the first round of applicants, please submit your application by February 21st . Along with your resume, please submit:
We approach our efforts differently than other teams - we are a mix of designers, researchers, policy experts, data scientists and technologists working to build a tighter link between policymakers, civil servants, and the families they serve, always with a rigorous focus on implementation. Our team is funded to provide no-cost teams to governments to improve benefits delivery such as income supports, care, and early education policies. We also convene practitioners across the country to learn from each other and inform better policy and program design.
Role Description
The Senior Fellow - Learning and Evaluation will serve as a senior member of the New Practice Lab Team working to identify and scope how the learning discipline is embedded into the work of all New Practice Lab efforts, driving the Lab’s approach to aligning its efforts to our north star impact measures, and working closely with our product, policy, design, data science, and engineering experts to improve the design and delivery of public benefits. The individual will work at the team level, supporting our internal learning agenda as we seek to improve our own effectiveness and progress toward our North Star, and also support work at the project level, embedding with sprint and design teams to apply rigorous learning expertise to the improvement of particular public benefits and programs.
Throughout this job description, the term “learning” is used to encompass evaluation activities, and to acknowledge that not every type of New Practice Lab effort will be well suited for a traditional “evaluation” activity as the method for assessing impact. We are a small and entrepreneurial team working with custom measures and often imperfect datasets. This is not a traditional program evaluation job. We seek a creative thinker who can design rigorous, formative learning strategies in data-constrained environments in ways that allow us to improve the quality of our work and insights as we go.
At a high level, some of the duties and responsibilities of this role will include:
- Clarifying, evaluating, and continually refining the Lab's theory of change
- Reviewing and refining the New Practice Lab’s north star measures and measurement approaches, working closely with the Data and Strategic Impact Lead on how projects are assessed against their potential for impact during the initiation phase, and continually assessing the New Practice Lab’s work against its goals for impact
- Developing innovative approaches to measuring the impact of the New Practice Lab as it builds new ways for disciplines to work together and practices to support a tighter feedback loop between policy and delivery - we are looking for someone who wants to be creative with measurement!
- Working with other New Practice Lab leaders to coordinate the review, update, and development of learning agendas and other portfolio management processes that consider evidence, progress of the New Practice Lab’s and others’ work in the field, and strategic considerations to inform project decision-making and level of effort the New Practice Lab should commit to various efforts
- Designing a learning plan for individual projects and engagements of the New Practice Lab, in close coordination with the Data and Strategic Impact Lead, and assessing whether the learning activities are best conducted by the New Practice Lab team itself or in collaboration with a learning partner
- Maintaining a network of potential learning partners such as researchers, academics, government evaluation officers and teams, and organizations leading new practices in the field of social policy learning and evaluation
- Managing the team’s evaluation contractors and academic partnerships, and contracts to ensure the completion of key deliverables, and results, learning, and data are collected, analyzed, and reported in a timely and useful manner
- Leading the development of communications on the New Practice Lab’s impact, learnings, and long-term strategic implications
- Developing tools and processes to provide access to data, evidence, and analytics for the team; design and support data-driven learning opportunities for the team
- Writing for both technical and public audiences, including memos, reports, briefs, op-eds, blogs, and others formats as needed
- Identifying and pursuing opportunities to disseminate and scale findings from sprints, collaborating with other members of the Lab’s team to translate insights into broader recommendations for action by policymakers and public sector agencies
The ideal candidate has demonstrated experience and success in:
- Leading the development of a Learning Agenda or complex learning strategy in an area of social policy, with the flexibility of having applied a learning framework to a variety of policy areas (e.g., dexterity with working in new subject areas)
- Assessing the the right type of evidence building activities that are well suited for the type of engagement a team is conducting - be it conducting deep discovery work, understanding feasibility, real-time monitoring, deploying an intervention or program change, convening practitioners to identify leading methods, or policy development sprint
- Constructively building partnerships and embedding learning into the work of multi-disciplinary teams, including partnering with product development and technology / digital service teams
- Applying a variety of learning methods of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, evaluation design and analysis strategies - particularly at the formative evaluation stage
- Conducting impact evaluations, including randomized evaluations, in field settings and adapting for the inherent constraints and surprises of learning in an applied environment
- Working within the evidence framework outlined in or closely aligned with the 2018 Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act and supporting guidance, including an understanding of standards of evidence and designing learning activities in the context of the needs of decision makers and leading practices of scientific integrity (e.g., pre-registration of analysis plans, independent code review, publication of all results)
- Thinking creatively about the application of insights from the social and behavioral sciences, and design interventions that are feasible within specific areas of public policy
- Working directly with government programs, policies, operations, and/or data and managing relationships with executive civil servants and leaders
- Statistical competency in at least one data analytic programming language (e.g., R, Stata)
This position is a full-time role with benefits. The annual salary is estimated to be between $140,000 – $180,000 and will account for commiserate experience. New America offers a highly competitive benefits package that includes health care, dental, and vision coverage; a generous retirement plan; paid time off; observes all federal holidays; and an office-wide closure between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Location
The position is remote and is open to candidates in North America.
Application Process
To be considered in the first round of applicants, please submit your application by February 21st . Along with your resume, please submit:
- A cover letter that describes your qualifications to apply
- An example (link or PDF) of a new or creative approach you designed, and where you were involved at every stage of project design and execution, to generate learning (this could be a feedback mechanism, pre-registration plan, results summary, research abstract, or another public document demonstrating how you structured learning to assess impact)
- OPTIONAL: You may include a 1-page memo or maximum 5-minute video or voice memo explaining the context for and details surrounding this work sample.
- 3 references (names, emails, phone number) (We will not contact these references unless you move forward to the interview process, and we will not begin outreach without informing you at least one day ahead of time.)