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Under Dr. Goodman's strong and creative leadership, GRG has earned a reputation for its rigorous, high quality work and impeccable client service. GRG’s staff of 15 includes research associates, research assistants, and administrative personnel. Working individually and in teams, we combine knowledge and experience in education, psychology, science, history, technology, human development, sociology, and family studies. Each project at GRG is tackled by a team composed of staff members who are best suited to the needs of the job. When appropriate, we provide additional expertise through our group of long-term senior consulting associates and through university faculty and experienced field researchers around the country. We also have regular student interns from local universities.
Brief biographical sketches of staff and consultants are provided when clicking on a staff person's name. Staff members may be reached by email: lastname@grginc.com
Irene F. Goodman, Ed. D., President
Colleen F. Manning, M.A., Director of Research
Elizabeth Bachrach, Ph. D., Senior Research Associate
Rucha Londhe, Ph. D., Research Associate
Karen C. Gareis, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate
Pam Stazesky, Ph.D., Research Associate
Laura Houseman, B.A., Senior Research Assistant
Markeisha Grant, B.A., Research Assistant
Maddie King, B.A., Research Assistant
Karina Lin, B.A., Research Assistant
Anne Marie Amello, Financial Manager
Tina Lagerstedt, B.A., Office Manager
Robert T. Brennan, Ed.D.
Allan Braslow, Ph.D.
Bonnie Newman, M.A., M.Ed.
Wendy Slattebo, Ed.D.
Karen Peterman, Ph. D.
Helena Pylvainen, B.A.
Dreolin Fleischer, M.A.
, Ed.D., Founder and President, brings to clients nearly 35 years of experience in research, teaching, and consulting. She started the company in 1989 as a sole proprietor (dba Sierra Research Associates), providing a variety of research, consulting, training, and product development services. Gradually, she began to specialize in the evaluation of a wide range of educational programs. By 1995, the client base and the scope of the projects had grown significantly, prompting Dr. Goodman to hire staff and incorporate the company as Goodman Research Group, Inc. While the company has grown in size and scope, GRG remains a workplace that reflects a strong commitment to community and collaboration, both among staff members and with clients.
In her leadership role, Dr. Goodman has oversight responsibility for all GRG strategic planning and business development, project work, staff mentoring, and fiscal matters. In addition, she provides consultation on evaluation to clients and groups, and gives workshops and lectures on the subject. She continues to be involved in a couple of key projects. For instance, she is serving as the Principal Investigator (PI) for GRG's own research project, Massachusetts Linking Experiences and Pathologies, or M-LEAP (please see our Current Projects page for a project description). Dr. Goodman also served as PI for the eight-year longitudinal evaluation of the National Cancer Institute's Science Enrichment Program (1998-2004) and the ground-breaking longitudinal Women's Experience in College Engineering (WECE) Project (1998-2002), funded by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Her earliest professional experiences (following a B.A. in Psychology from UCLA and a Master's in Child Development from Washington State University) were in the domain of childcare and early education. She was the director of the Tacoma Community College (TCC) childcare center in Tacoma, Washington in the mid 1970s, and chaired a panel to develop an early childhood education curriculum at TCC. She then became an Assistant Professor of Child Development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and concurrently the statewide Extension Child Development Specialist. She traveled extensively around the state, offering consultation and teaching to extension staff, other educators, and the general public, while maintaining her Madison campus faculty roles.
Dr. Goodman earned a doctorate in Education, specializing in Human Development, from Harvard University. While a doctoral student, she was an evaluation consultant to various local and national organizations and also taught courses at Dartmouth College and Tufts University as Visiting Lecturer. Prior to founding GRG, she had an extensive research consulting practice, designing and conducting evaluations, developing instructional materials, and carrying out regional training sessions on public policy issues. She also had stints as senior research associate at other research institutes.
, M.A., Director of Research, provides oversight of GRG’s research program, including establishing and helping to maintain research policies and procedures, reviewing research proposals and plans, and supporting project management and staff professional development. Ms. Manning manages select projects and provides evaluation consultation to client organizations. She joined GRG in 1993, and has carried out over 40 evaluations of educational programs, including science education programs, parenting education programs, and educational television shows and outreach campaigns. She also has carried out research on child care workforce and market rate issues.
Ms. Manning recently completed coursework in the Public Policy Ph.D. program at University of Massachusetts-Boston and currently working toward the completion of her doctoral dissertation. She has an M.A. in Child Development from Tufts University, where she taught at the Tufts Educational Day Care Center and interned with the Boston Medical Center’s Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Mount Holyoke College.
(née Fealk), Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, joined GRG in January 2000 as a Research Associate, with a strong background in child development and educational media and technology. She became a Senior Research Associate in 2002 and began heading up GRG’s Los Angeles-based West Coast office in 2005. Dr. Bachrach has designed and managed over 40 projects at GRG, ranging from studies of formal and informal science education programs to professional development workshops, and distance learning for K-12 teachers, to multimedia educational packages and national outreach initiatives accompanying public TV series and documentaries. She has written proposals and designed evaluation plans for projects that have received funding from the NSF, NIH, and HHS, and serves as an internal consultant on several evaluations.
Dr. Bachrach is currently managing a range of projects, including the PBS children’s television series, Sid the Science Kid, and associated preschool science curriculum and national outreach, for the Jim Henson Company as well as a new online resource for lawyers and judges aimed to help them to assess the potential limitations of expert witnesses and forensic techniques.
Dr. Bachrach earned a Certificate of Completion from RIVA (Research in Values and Attitudes) Moderator Training and has expertise conducting focus groups with children and adults, as well as evaluating classroom curriculum materials and local news products. Dr. Bachrach earned a doctorate in Developmental Psychology from Brandeis University, where she studied the development of children’s cognitive abilities, with a focus on their attention to and comprehension of media. She earned an A.B. in Psychology at the University of Michigan.
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Ph.D., Research Associate, joined GRG in May 2006. During the past five years, Dr. Londhe has managed over twenty evaluation projects across a number of content areas. Currently, she is managing two Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP) projects - a new funding stream from NSF that seeks to establish a coordinated national network of regionally- or thematically-based partnerships devoted to increasing the adoption of effective, high quality educational programs and resources related to the science of climate change and its impacts. Both these projects will be soon beginning the second year of the planning phase, during which Dr. Londhe will develop an extensive evaluation plan for the implementation phase of these projects.
Recently Dr. Londhe completed two interesting projects - the evaluation of the Metropolitan Opera's The Met: HD Live in Schools project for the third year in a row and an evaluation of an IMLS-funded project for WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA). The IMLS-funded project's purpose was to preserve, digitize, and catalog interviews, along with stock footage, from the WGBH 1983 landmark series Vietnam: A Television History, which is part of WGBH’s Open Vault.
Dr. Londhe received her doctorate from the School of Family Studies, University of Connecticut in Human Development and Family Studies, with a specialization in child development. Dr. Londhe has a graduate degree in Psychology from Bombay University, India, where she also worked as a clinician before moving to the U.S.
, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, joined GRG in April of 2009. She is currently managing evaluations of Pushing the Limits, an NSF-funded partnership among Dartmouth College, the Association of Rural and Small Libraries, the Califa Library Group, Oregon State University, and Dawson Media Group to build rural libraries’ capacity to enhance public understanding of math and science; MIT’s Terrascope Youth Radio, an NSF-funded project in which urban teens create and host radio pieces on environmental and Earth-system science; the education and public outreach activities associated with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, launched in 1999 by NASA as its flagship mission for X-ray astronomy; the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program, in which outstanding K–12 STEM teachers spend a year in Washington, DC, bringing their expertise to Congress and appropriate branches of federal government and gaining insights into national educational issues; Communities of Learning for Urban Environments and Science (CLUES), an NSF-funded project in which four museums are collaborating to train members of community-based organizations to provide STEM programming to underserved families; and the Massachusetts Linking Experiences and Pathways (M-LEAP) project, funded by an NSF Gender in Science and Engineering grant to GRG, which is a longitudinal study of students in grades 3-8 designed to learn how their in- and out-of-school experiences shape career-related choices.
Dr. Gareis has conducted studies in a variety of areas, including social support, program evaluation, and gender. Before joining GRG, she spent 12 years at Brandeis University’s Community, Families, and Work Program conducting research on work-family issues. She also spent 5 years as an adjunct lecturer at Boston University teaching Introductory Psychology and Social Psychology. Dr. Gareis received her doctorate and M.A. in Social Psychology from Boston University’s graduate program in Human Development and a B.S. in Psychology with minors in Linguistics and Anthropology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
, Ph.D., Research Associate, joined GRG in June of 2011. Currently, she is managing select projects and provides evaluation expertise to clients. Before joining GRG, she spent over fifteen years conducting program evaluations and research studies in K-12 public education. She spent ten years at the Delaware Education Research and Development Center at the University of Delaware conducting evaluation and research studies across a variety of areas. During this time, she also taught courses in Elementary Statistics, Research Methods, and Assessment for Classroom Teachers. In addition, Dr. Stazesky has been invited to serve on national panels to review the evaluation design of federal proposals.
Dr. Stazesky received her doctorate in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Quantitative and Evaluation Methodologies from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also earned a master’s degree in mathematics education at the University of Houston and her B.S. in Management Information Systems from Ball State University.
, B.A., Senior Research Assistant,
worked part-time at GRG throughout her undergraduate years at Boston University, becoming a full-time employee in July of 2007. She was promoted to Senior Research Assistant in July 2009. Currently, Ms. Houseman is managing an evaluation for the Shelburne Museum’s Passport to Learning program which expands upon the field trip experience for K-8 students through 12 workshops related to the museum exhibits. She also works on an evaluation of George Mason University's web resource for K-12 US History teachers: www.teachinghistory.org.
Ms. Houseman received a B.A. in psychology from Boston University. As a part of her senior research work, she conducted a study on the relationships between attachment, family expressiveness, and socioeconomic status. She also studied statistics, research methods and child development. In her senior year, she worked as an intern on a GRG evaluation for Simmons College and the Girls Get Connected Collaborative of their Technology at the Crossroads project. At GRG, she continues to work on five STEM related projects including CLUES which provides STEM programming for underserved families in the Philadelphia-Camden area and NPASS2, an NSF-funded national partnership of after-school science using a train-the-trainer model for curriculum implementation.
 Markeisha Grant, B.A., Research Assistant, joined GRG in 2011, after graduating Cum Laude from Smith College with high honors in Psychology. Through the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) at Smith, she worked on a National Institution of Health funded longitudinal study, The School Readiness Research Consortium. The study examined whether preschoolers living in low-income communities in Houston, Texas and Tallahassee, Florida, can be better prepared for school if the quality of their subsidized daycare programs is improved. For her honors thesis, she examined language acquisition and literacy development for a subset of Hispanic preschoolers who participated in the School Readiness Research Consortium.
A sample of her current projects include the Massachusetts Linking Experiences and Pathways (M-LEAP) study, a longitudinal study which examines the question “How do students’ in-school and out-of-school experiences shape their choices related to their future careers?”; Ohio State University’s It’s About Discovery (IAD) study, which aims to extend student readiness to engage in STEM careers and equip teachers to use a challenging STEM-related curriculum; and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) study, which aims to increase the number of underrepresented minority students earning baccalaureate degrees in STEM.
, B.A., Research Assistant, joined GRG after graduation with Honors from Williams College in 2011 with a degree in Psychology and Art History. Her senior honors thesis examined the interaction between social referencing and the spotlight effect in minority students. In her sophomore and junior years she worked as a research assistant in the Social Psychology department at Williams working on a variety of projects. She has previously worked as an intern for Communities Without Borders, a non-profit working to educate children orphaned by AIDS in Zambia.
Two of Ms. King’s current projects include: The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program, in which outstanding K–12 STEM teachers have the opportunity to bring their expertise to Congress and appropriate branches of federal government and gain insights into national educational issues. She is also working on an evaluation of the education and public outreach activities associated with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, launched in 1999 by NASA as its flagship mission for X-ray astronomy.
, B.A., Research Assistant,
joined GRG in 2011 after graduating with honors from Barnard College of Columbia University with a degree in Psychology. Before graduating, she has worked in developmental psychology labs at Columbia and Johns Hopkins University researching children's understanding of math and number. Her senior thesis explored children's perception of fairness and generosity.
Her current projects include: Science Festival Alliance, an NSF-funded alliance of four festivals that seek to develop more hands-on science experiences for children; George Mason University's teachinghistory.org, a website dedicated to providing resources to K-12 US History teachers; NPASS2, an NSF-funded project aiming to develop trainers and curriculum for after-school science programs; Ford Family Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing scholarships and support to students who are in financial need and show exceptional leadership skills; and MIT's Terrascope Youth Radio, an NSF-funded project designed to have teens broadcast radio programs on environmental issues.
, Financial Manager, has been a GRG staff member since 1998. She provides financial coordination and budget monitoring for all of GRG's projects, and assists Dr. Goodman with all aspects of fiscal management. Before coming to GRG, Ms. Amello was on the staff of the Office of Professional and Continuing Studies at Tufts University for seven years, promoted from junior staff assistant to administrative assistant. She also worked at Malden Hospital and, before that, at the First National Bank of Boston. She graduated from Bunker Hill Community College in the Human Services Program.
, B.A., Office Manager/Assistant to the President, has been a GRG staff member since May 2010. She oversees office operations, provides support to research staff, supervises undergraduate workers, and works with Dr. Goodman to ensure quality client relations. Before coming to GRG, Ms. Lagerstedt graduated with Honors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Spanish. In her senior year, she worked on a year long Honors team project which included building a website and updating a computer room for a non-profit located in Holyoke, Massachusetts. During her time at UMASS, Ms. Lagerstedt interned for State Senator Robert O’Leary, the League of Women Voters, and Commonwealth Land Trust, a non-profit located in West Roxbury, MA and worked at Tickets Unlimited, a student run collective.
, Ed.D., has provided support in quantitative research methods, from study design to statistical analysis, to GRG since 1993. Dr. Brennan has considerable experience in advanced statistical techniques, including hierarchical linear modeling, item-response theory, logistic regression, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling. He was the project statistical methodologist for GRG’s NCI SEP project and has consulted on numerous other GRG projects, including the WECE study of women enrolled in engineering. He brought his vast experience in studying CPR training to several projects that GRG conducted for the American Heart Association, and now for the National Safety Council.
Dr. Brennan has authored and co-authored over 30 scholarly articles on topics in social psychology, education, medicine and public health. He currently holds an appointment in the Department of Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and has taught courses in hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), research design, measurement, data collection, and program evaluation at Harvard, at both the schools of Education and Government. He holds an A.B. from Amherst College, an M.A. from Middlebury College, and a master’s and a doctorate degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
, Ph.D., has served with GRG since 2000. He was a Co-PI for GRG’s research and evaluation work with the American Heart Association and the American Red Cross, and is a specialist in public health and public safety research, development, and education. As a researcher-practitioner working with leading universities, government agencies, not-for-profits, major corporations and in private practice, Dr. Braslow has developed, evaluated and/or administered domestic and international programs in emergency medicine, emergency cardiac care, injury control, highway safety, and consumer safety.
Dr. Braslow has served as an expert and is a member of various advisory boards for such agencies as the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes for Health (PAD trial, NHAAP), U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Transportation (Highway Safety and Trauma), U.S. Olympic Committee, and U.S. Public Health Service (AHRQ). Dr. Braslow is also a Visiting Scholar, Department of Organizational Dynamics at University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Illinois where he specialized in public and provider education, medical research dissemination and implementation, public health and safety, and educational psychology. His M.S. (1980) and B.A. (1974) degrees are from The Pennsylvania State University.
, M.A., M.Ed brings her strength in management and strategic planning to GRG, both as an internal consultant and as part of evaluation teams when organizational strategy is a key component of the evaluation.
Ms. Newman brings 35 years of administrative leadership experience in higher education and the non profit sector. During her 14-year tenure at Tufts University, she served as Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, Director of Continuing Education and Summer Programs, and Director of Tufts European Center in Talloires, France, and earned a reputation for expanding programs. In recent years, she has served as the Executive Director of the national non-profit, A Better Chance, and then as an independent management consultant. Her consulting work includes interim executive director positions in eight non-profit organizations, helping them to expand their services in order to meet the needs of diverse audiences and to maintain viability. She brings administrative expertise, strategic/analytical orientation, and strong interpersonal and facilitation skills to help small- to medium-size organizations achieve their planning, organizational management, and program development goals.
, Ed.D., has worked with GRG since 1991 on child counseling and mental health issues, school health program development, and child and family literacy research. She has conducted reading assessments of children in family child care homes as part of GRG’s evaluation of RIFNet for Reading Is Fundamental. In recent years, she carried out observations for GRG’s ZOOM research and also reviewed documents regarding reading and literacy. A licensed psychologist, Dr. Slattebo was, until her retirement, a guidance counselor in the Wayland, Massachusetts public schools. Previously, she was a reading specialist and child therapist in a community mental health agency. She has a B.A. in Psychology from U.C. Berkeley and an M.Ed. and Ed.D (Human Development) from Harvard University.
, Ph.D., joined the GRG staff in October 2002 and was promoted to Senior RA in 2005. During that time, she managed a variety of projects. She has experience designing and carrying out evaluations for a variety of funding agencies, including DOE, IMLS, NCI, and NSF. She transitioned to part-time Senior Consultant in fall 2009. In that role, Dr. Peterman is currently directing a research project for the UCSD BioBridge professional development program, and managing an evaluation of the IT-E3 project created by the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. She has expertise in embedded assessment and evaluation design. Prior to joining GRG, Dr. Peterman consulted with Insight Research Group and assisted with a summative evaluation project at the Exploris Museum. After earning a Ph.D. from Duke University, she was an NIH Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Developmental Science at UNC Chapel Hill.
, B.A., is serving as a consultant after having worked at GRG for three years, first as a Research Assistant and then promoted as a Senior Research Assistant. Ms. Pylvainen is currently attending Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she is working toward a Masters in Public Policy.
Prior to GRG, she attended Wellesley College where she graduated with Honors and a Bachelors degree in International Relations-History. She was the first Research Coordinator on our NSF-funded research study, Massachusetts Linking Experiences and Pathways (M-LEAP) project. Ms. Pylvainen was also a Research Analyst on our evaluation of UCSD’s BioBridge professional development program for high school science teachers, an innovative science curriculum model. Currently, she is assisting Dr. Goodman on proposal and business development work.
 , M.A., worked for GRG from August 2001 to July 2005 first as a Research Assistant and then Senior Research Assistant before moving to California to pursue her doctorate in Evaluation and Applied Research Methods at Claremont Graduate University. Ms. Fleischer, who is currently working on her dissertation, began working as a consultant at GRG in July 2010 upon her return to Massachusetts. She brings 10 years of experience planning, assisting, and leading evaluations to her role as consultant. Ms. Fleischer’s primary responsibility is working with Dr. Goodman on proposals for new evaluation work.
Ms. Fleischer received a BA in English Literature from Mount Holyoke College in 2001 and a MA in Psychology from Claremont Graduate University in 2007. While in graduate school she has had the opportunity to co-author articles based on research she conducted. The first article, “Evaluation Use: Results from a Survey of U.S. American Evaluation Association Members,” is based on the results of her master’s thesis and was published in 2009 in the American Journal of Evaluation. The second article, published in the American Journal of Evaluation in 2010, is titled “Insight Into Evaluation Practice: A Content Analysis of Designs and Methods Used in Evaluation Studies Published in North American Evaluation-Focused Journals.” The third article, “Perceptions of Evaluation Capacity Building in the US: A Descriptive Study of American Evaluation Association Members,” is currently under review and is slated to be published in the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation. Ms. Fleischer’s research interests include evaluation practice and evaluation use.
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