Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Building Beloved Community Through Evaluation
Friday, May 16: monique liston
What does it mean to be a good neighbor in a world shaped by policies that often fail to serve the people most impacted by them? This conversation challenges evaluators, community leaders, and change-makers to move beyond compliance-driven evaluation and toward evaluation as a tool for radical relationship-building and collective care.
Evaluation is not just about measuring impact; it is about creating the conditions for communities to thrive on their own terms. By centering the lived experiences of those most affected, we can dismantle extractive data practices and instead use evaluation to amplify wisdom, strengthen networks, and build the kind of world that no policy or government could ever fully imagine.
Through storytelling, critical reflection, and real-world examples, this keynote will explore how evaluation—when approached with humility, accountability, and a commitment to justice—can help us show up as better neighbors, ensuring that our work serves as a foundation for liberation rather than a tool of control.
monique liston. What happens when Black identity is loved, protected, and defended as we collectively learn about process and change in organizations and programs? This is the question that dr. monique liston unapologetically built a community-engaged intellectual and regenerative life practice around. She is the founder, chief strategist, and joyful militant at UBUNTU Research and Evaluation, an undisciplined learning organization that was awarded Milwaukee Business Journal's Diversity in Business Award. She also serves as the Executive Director of The Leadership Undercommons, an organization that protects and fulfills a sense of dignity for Black people through learning and leadership. She is a sought-after facilitator, speaker, evaluator, collaborator, and good time have-r. Never forget that she went to school for many years but is most proud to be an alum of Howard University. Her awards include being a 2025 Milwaukee Business Journal 40 Under 40 Honoree, Public Allies 1st and ONLY honorary alumni, and HBCU Alumni United Milwaukee Alumni of the Year. While she is not a self-identified poet, she published a book of poetry titled FRACTALS in 2025. As the daughter of Ursula, granddaughter of Gracie J. and Bernice, pet-mom of Simone, a mini Goldendoodle, and Franklin, a Russian Box Tortoise, she asks that you send her recommendations of bookstores, restaurants, and beaches to help her find joy while surviving the end of a white supremacist heteropatriarchal queerphobic world.