ST. PAUL, Minnesota – The Twin Cities Metropolitan Council’s Equity Advisory Committee has invited Leah Goldstein Moses, Founder and CEO of The Improve Group, a locally based research and evaluation consulting firm, to join the committee and contribute to its work.
The Equity Advisory Committee was created in October 2015 to advise the Metropolitan Council in its work advancing equity, with the goal of creating more equitable outcomes for people who live and work in our metropolitan region. Goldstein Moses is a resident of Eagan and will be representing District H, which includes the majority of Dakota County, on the committee until January 2020.
The Metropolitan Council is the regional governmental agency and planning organization in Minnesota that serves the Twin Cities seven-county metropolitan area by operating Metro Transit and investing in clean water, parks, and housing.
“Equity is an issue I care about and I hope to offer evaluation expertise and an analytical perspective to the work we're doing,” Goldstein Moses said.
Through hundreds of evaluations over the last 18 years, Goldstein Moses and her team at The Improve Group have developed and practice a Community-Responsive ApproachSM to create an inclusive evaluation process in all of their projects that ensures unique perspectives of all affected communities and stakeholder groups are represented. This approach helps local, state, and national programs serve all people more equitably, and Goldstein Moses has experience working on projects with government agencies at all three of these levels.
One of the responsibilities of the Equity Advisory Committee is to advise the Met Council on various policy issues as requested—including a public transit fare increase in 2017 and considering accessibility and inclusion in park services being offered across the metro for the Met Council’s Parks Plan. In the year ahead, the EAC is interested in creating a scorecard or other tool that brings an equity analysis to policy issues.
“I've been fortunate enough at The Improve Group to learn about the ways policies contribute to or detract from equity. I hope to bring that experience to the committee. I think the policy work Met Council does is really interesting because their work is on the scale of a 30,000 foot view,” Goldstein Moses said of her excitement to be part of the Equity Advisory Committee.
“Being able to influence equity at that level is really powerful because each city or community takes the guidelines from Met Council to interpret and implement them differently. Because Committee members represent such diverse areas of expertise and experience, we can be really creative in how the Met Council’s work can promote greater equity,” she said.
About The Improve Group
The Improve Group is a woman-owned, full-service evaluation, research, and strategic planning consulting firm based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Incorporated as a social enterprise, The Improve Group is committed to helping local, national, and international organizations make the most of information, navigate complexity, and ensure their investments lead to meaningful, sustained impact.
Utilizing a Community-Responsive ApproachSM means being responsive to the distinct characteristics of each community when we design evaluation projects, and this leads to hearing more authentic experiences, concerns, and results. The community responsive approach helps us develop innovative, culturally-appropriate evaluation techniques that respect the needs of all groups while unearthing new findings related to equity in the programs being evaluated. Read more at www.theimprovegroup.com