ANNOUNCEMENT
Project Evident Welcomes Peter York As Chief Data Scientist
York will oversee the organization’s data intelligence hub to scale data, evidence, and technology efforts, delivering better, faster, and more cost-effective impact for practitioners and the communities they serve.
Project Evident is pleased to announce that Peter York has joined the organization as Chief Data Scientist. York will provide visionary, strategic, and hands-on leadership to advance Project Evident’s mission of transforming how evidence is created and used in the social and education sectors.
Working collaboratively with the Project Evident team, York will lead the development and scaling of practitioner-centered, evidence-based services and tools to advance a stronger ecosystem. He will bring his innovation and expertise to cultivate external relationships, drive business growth, provide thought leadership, and platform field-building efforts across the sector.
York brings more than 25 years of experience as a consultant and researcher in the evaluation, government, and nonprofit fields, most recently as Chief Data Scientist and Principal at BCT Partners. He has designed and led numerous research and evaluation studies with private philanthropies, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies. He has spent the last ten years developing analytic techniques that leverage machine learning algorithms and big data to create predictive, prescriptive, and rigorous evaluation models and tools for social change agents. York has also authored a book on the topic of evaluation for philanthropists: Funder’s Guide to Evaluation: Leveraging Evaluation to Improve Nonprofit Effectiveness, as well as has authored book chapters, academic and professional articles, including a chapter in Project Evident’s book, Next Generation Evidence: Strategies for More Equitable Social Impact.
“I’m ecstatic that Pete is joining our team,” Project Evident CEO Kelly Fitzsimmons said. “We knew we needed an expert innovator, committed to practitioners with deep knowledge in data, evaluation, and technology. Pete is that person. As a long-time partner of Project Evident, having Pete on the team means we can drive toward our next stage of impact with greater confidence in the services and tools we offer for more leveraged delivery. Pete’s leadership will be transformative to our work.”
“Having partnered with Project Evident over the years, I’ve seen firsthand their commitment to putting evidence in the hands of those who can use it most effectively,” York said. “Project Evident has built something truly unique—a practitioner-centered approach that makes rigorous evaluation accessible and useful. Joining the team as Chief Data Scientist feels like a natural next step in our shared mission. Together, we can accelerate the shift from evaluating programs after the fact to building an evidence ecosystem that supports practitioner-centric real-time learning and continuous improvement.”
In addition to his leadership in data science, York is a faculty member of the Evaluators’ Institute and International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET). He has served or currently serves in leadership and volunteer capacities with social impact groups, including the Alliance for Effective Social Investing, Reimagining Service/Presidio Institute, Data Analyst for Social Good, the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, and the Social Innovation Fund. York is a Leap Ambassador, a private community of nonprofit thought leaders who are committed to the adoption of high performance in the nonprofit sector.
Join Peter York and Project Evident CEO and Founder, Kelly Fitzsimmons, for a webinar, NextGen Tools for NextGen Evidence: AI-Enabled Decision Making for Impact, on Wednesday, December 3, from 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET. Register here.