Nadine Dechausay

Nadine Dechausay is CFT’s senior director of learning and insights. Drawing on her career as an evaluator, she is responsible for building out a learning function that tracks the results of foundation investments, mobilizes knowledge in service of strategy and builds evaluation capacity within the social sector. She is committed to storytelling to advance collective understanding of implementation experiences and helping leaders use data and evidence for continuous program improvement.

Nadine previously oversaw grantmaking for the W.W. Caruth Jr. Fund at CFT, introducing new practices focused on equity, transparency and using human-centered design to support social innovation. Nadine continues to serve as a contact for efforts related to impact investing, career pathways and place-based initiatives.

Prior to joining CFT in 2018, Nadine was a senior research associate at MDRC, a national social policy research firm, where she directed the Center for Applied Behavioral Science and managed several national and local evaluations. She has published implementation research findings and spoken widely on topics related to behavioral economics, incentives and evidence-based policymaking. She is an expert in design thinking who has helped nonprofit leaders innovate by applying behavioral insights and leveraging new technologies.

Nadine is A.B.D. in sociology at New York University. She holds a J.D. with honors and master’s degrees in criminology and applied psychology from the University of Toronto. She holds bachelor’s degrees in education and human biology from Brown University.

COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP / BOARD SERVICE

Nadine is a licensed consultant for Standards for Excellence and available to deliver trainings to nonprofits on topics from board effectiveness to program evaluation. She is an instructor at Austin Community College’s Center for Nonprofit Studies where she created a course on measuring social impact. She is a volunteer youth basketball coach.

She’s served on the Texas Health Resources Foundation Board. She was elected to the Texas Health Resources Community Impact Dallas/Rockwall Leadership Council and was selected to be Designer in Residence for SMU’s Master of Arts in Design and Innovation, Fall 2020.