About InSites > Board of Directors / Staff > Beverly Parsons

Beverly Parsons
Executive Director, InSites

Beverly Parsons is Executive Director of InSites, a Colorado-based nonprofit organization. InSites works through inquiry-based evaluation, planning, and research to support learning, growth, and change in formal and informal social systems. InSites pays particular attention to how social systems attend to environmental sustainability, social justice, economic well-being, and community development. InSites’ approaches emphasize systems thinking and partnerships. InSites has a small staff and carries out its work through strategic engagement of consultants and partnerships with other organizations.

Dr. Parsons holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in Educational Research and Evaluation (University of Colorado) and a B.S. in Medical Technology (University of Wisconsin). She has a certification in Sustainable Business (Bainbridge Graduate Institute), in Human Systems Dynamics (Human Systems Dynamics Institute), and Appreciative Inquiry facilitation (Company of Experts).

During her 19 years at InSites, Dr. Parsons has worked with initiatives in education, health, and social services fields. She has been a consultant to several foundations, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Center for the Study of Social Policy. Her work with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation included serving as primary author for their guide on initiative evaluation (Designing Initiative Evaluation: A Systems-oriented Framework for Evaluating Social Change Efforts). She has served as a consultant to the South African Department of Education on assessment policy, conducted evaluations in China and Japan, and assisted teams in 12 countries in Central and Eastern Europe in program evaluation and redesign of curriculum.

Her areas of emphasis are research and evaluation designs for multi-site, multi-level, large scale initiatives and using systems thinking and systems theories in research and evaluation. She is currently the principal investigator of a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to build the capacity of evaluators of NSF education programs in the use of a systems thinking perspective.

Prior to InSites, Dr. Parsons was at the Denver-based Education Commission of the States (ECS) for 10 years. (ECS is a national interstate compact that assists governors, legislators, and state education and business leaders to improve education through leadership and policy.) Among other work, she led ECS' largest systems change initiative to fundamentally change the education system at school, district, university, and state levels to support enhanced teaching and learning. She focused on the role of policy change and partnerships in whole system, dynamic change.

Previously Dr. Parsons was at Education Northwest (Portland, OR) as Director of the Assessment and Measurement Program; worked on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota; held university adjunct teaching positions; and was a physiological chemistry laboratory instructor (University of Wisconsin medical school).

Dr. Parsons is currently on the American Evaluation Association board and a member of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals. She has a strong background in quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Contact information: 360-638-1442 (voice); 360-638-1454 (fax); 661-343-5052 (cell); www.insites.org; bparsons@insites.org