Dr. Amber Mason brings over 14 years of professional experience in the field of education, research,measurement and evaluation. Her professional efforts seek to champion the importance of goodresearch and evaluation practices, ultimately being a change agent for educational and socialorganizations at large. Further, her work seeks to strengthen the effectiveness of data utilization ineducational, non-profit, foundations, and community networks, and other mission-drivenorganizations. At the center of her work, Dr. Mason relentlessly advocates for those groups who havetraditionally been oppressed, marginalized and misrepresented in public narratives.
Dr. Mason’s work has involved research and evaluation studies for educational and social impactorganizations, with a focus on the variability of outcomes for a range of topics impacting differentsocial and ethnic backgrounds (i.e. language and literacy development, school readiness,instructional practices, professional development, special education, family engagement, economicdevelopment, carceral justice system, etc.). Her work has been instrumental in the development ofthe data infrastructures necessary for partners to utilize data to inform programmatic practice andpolicy decisions for diverse groups of stakeholders.
Dr. Mason credits her career beginnings as a high school mathematics instructor in the Chicago areaas a catalyst to infusing anti-racist practices in her efforts to promote importance of data usage,research, and culturally responsive evaluation practice. Most recently, Dr. Mason served as an expertpanelist on the Bright Promises Foundation’s "Confronting Racism: Causes and Strategies forAddressing Race Based Trauma in Children" event, where she provided a culturally responsiveevaluation lens to discussions surrounding how trauma caused by racism impacts children andyouth, and how we as adults can promote youth healing and resiliency. Her love of facilitation andinstruction continues as she volunteers as an instructor for the Pathways Initiative, a collaborativeseeking to strengthen the diversity of the Chicago area program evaluation field by increasing therecruitment, training and retention of culturally responsive and equity-focused evaluators of color inthe Chicago region.
Dr. Amber Mason received her B.A. in Economics from Spelman College. She earned a Master’s ofScience in Education from Quincy University, and completed a Post-Master’s Certification in ProgramEvaluation at Georgia State University. In 2019, she received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studieswith a concentration in Research, Measurement, and Statistics from Georgia State University.