I am currently president of Decision Information Resources, Inc. (DIR), an African American–owned full-service research and evaluation firm founded nearly thirty-nine years ago by Dr. Russell Jackson. I also serve as the Acting Director of Research Operations, overseeing the staff responsible for large-scale data collection and national evaluation projects.
I was born in Marshall, Texas. My parents, who divorced when I was in first grade, both had blue collar jobs for most of my childhood. I have one sibling, an older sister who also works at DIR, an eleven-year-old son, and a twenty-two-year-old niece. We didn’t grow up with a lot of material comforts, but we always had what we needed.
I first learned about DIR while completing my master’s degree. Initially, I was hired as a statistical consultant in 2004, retaining that position until 2007. I joined the organization full time as a Senior Research Associate in 2008. Fast forward almost twenty years from my introduction to DIR, and I am now the president as Dr. Jackson formally announced his retirement in 2023.
When I joined DIR, there were fewer than thirty full-time employees. Today, we have nearly sixty full-time employees, and another sixty to seventy-five part-time staff (most in a call center)—this number varies depending on the sizes and needs of our projects. Most of our staff are in Houston, Texas and Rockville, Maryland; however, we also have staff in Alabama, California, Illinois, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Washington. A constant over my nearly two decades at DIR has been the diversity of the staff—70 percent are people of color. Given this, it is easy to assume we are a culturally sensitive and aware organization, and I firmly believe we strive to be. However, recent increasing racial tensions in the world have put us to the test.
Most of our studies involve at-risk, minority, underserved, and hard-to- reach populations, typically evaluating social policy issues related to poverty, housing, and work. We do a mix of research and evaluation for the federal government—the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor—and with foundations, such as the Will Keith Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. For our foundation clients, we conduct program evaluations to measure the effectiveness of funded programs.
One day, Natalia, one of my direct reports at the time, and I were driving to Dallas to attend a convening with the WWKF for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation project. We were talking about race and racial differences in the US versus Mexico, where she grew up. Given our work on this project, we had both been digging deeper into these kinds of discussions, and for Natalia, it had prompted her to explore her racial identity as an immigrant in the US.
“I’m curious,” I asked. “How do you fill out the census?”
“Oh, I select White for race and Hispanic for ethnicity,” she said.
“But you’re not White,” was my immediate response. Then I thought, Wait a minute; that wasn’t appropriate for me to say. She’s going to be offended.
“I’m sorry,” I quickly said. “It’s not for me to tell you what your racial or ethnic identity should be.”
But she gave me some grace, explaining, “Actually, it’s the first time I ever really thought about it. Growing up in Mexico, throughout my childhood, I was considered White because of my fairer skin tone—this came with an assumption of privilege. And I’m still considered White by most Mexican Americans with whom I interact here in the United States.”
“That’s interesting,” I mused, recovering from my embarrassment. “I knew you identified as Mexican, but I never realized you considered yourself White.”
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I never really thought about it either until you asked me about it. I may check another box in the future.”
Today, Natalia considers herself a “light skinned Latina,” perceived to have some level of privilege. I thought it was great to be able to have this conversation with her and have her react so graciously to my faux pas. It created an opportunity for a deeper discussion of how racism has evolved in the US compared to other countries. I aspire for DIR to be a safe space to have these kinds of conversations.
I know it takes deliberate work to develop skills of racially sensitive awareness and dialogue, and my goal is to lead by example and create space for others to join. So when Dr. Jean Latting began the online membership program, Pathfinders, designed to help participants effectively navigate difficult conversations about elephant-in-the-room issues like power, race, and privilege, I invited members of my team (Research Operations) to participate alongside me. Eight of us, including myself, began the journey in early 2021.
My hope is that in reading about and talking through racial and other social justice issues in Pathfinders, our shared learning experiences will help us develop an increased comfort level with difficult conversations that will spread throughout the organization. We have heard Dr. Latting say many times, “If you can talk about race and racial tensions, you can talk about anything.”
What I want for us to achieve from our navigation through Pathfinders—and I see it happening—is to create a space for there to be conversations about issues previously seen as undiscussable. Instead of expecting people to find the right words and the right time to address an elephant in the room, we will start with trust between us and then help each other raise the topic and push through a discussion.
I’d like to hear us say, “Look, I don’t know that I’m going to say this correctly. I’m just asking for space to talk. You have my permission to stop me if you think I’m going too far or choosing the wrong words. I need your help in navigating this.” That’s the kind of openness I aspire to have with everyone at DIR.
As mentioned earlier, much of the work we do in DIR focuses on communities of color. To be fully responsive in designing and carrying out the work, we must apply a culturally sensitive lens across all aspects of our projects. I’m aware more needs to be done to help our staff develop and apply this perspective effectively. Joining Pathfinders is a step toward that.
DIR is a leader in the industry, and we pride ourselves on being an organization with a diversity of cultures and experiences across our staff. We also believe part of our responsibility is to ensure the infusion of culturally responsive principles into all our projects. A key step toward that is developing sensitivity and awareness when it comes to racial issues. Because our organization is 70 percent minority, I think there’s been an assumption that it is a safe space, that we’ve got this figured out, and that we’re automatically doing culturally responsive work. But that’s not true at all. We still have a lot of work to do. There are still a lot of undiscussables.
Additionally, the nature of our work requires open, honest, and respectful debate. We engage in a lot of back-and-forth brainstorming and problem solving: Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? I want the DIR space to be one where we’re pushing each other as scholars and as individuals, and to do this, we must be willing to address tensions, race-related and beyond. There are still a lot of undiscussables, and not simply due to issues involving race.
It’s been a long road from my early days at DIR to here. When I first started at DIR, I had just finished up a post-doctoral program at Harvard. I had been a consultant with the organization for several years, and Russell created a senior position in the firm for me, likely the first hire at that level for a long time. At the time, there wasn’t an executive team, just two vice presidents. My early days at DIR were also complicated by the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, which destroyed the roof of our building and forced everyone to work remotely for six months, just weeks after I started.
One of my first assignments was to support the implementation of a large-scale data collection project in New York. I was familiar with this particular client, as I’d first worked with them in 2002 when I started graduate school. For this project, I went straight into researcher mode—reviewing instruments, asking questions, suggesting changes. In retrospect, I was upsetting the applecart. I was in my comfort zone with this project, but the people at DIR didn’t know me. They just knew I was asking questions and they were expected to respond. Russell was looking to me to support a process already underway with people who had no experience with me . . . and I’m sure I wasn’t as polished then as I am now when it came to asking questions and pointing out flaws.
Even though I was working with an organization familiar with me and my background, I wanted to hit the ground running in the new position. It seemed like almost overnight the company had grown and the industry had changed, but DIR remained the same, with the same staff doing their work the way they had always done it. And it was still working! However, the company was short-staffed, given the increase in volume, and the new contracts required additional skillsets.
This was immediately obvious to me, but probably not to Pam, one of the vice presidents and the Director of Survey Operations. At the time, she’d been with DIR for over fifteen years. I suspect Pam felt I was stepping into her territory, swerving into her lane, and I was not welcome. It didn’t help that Russell was giving me space to direct the project. Meanwhile, the client was constantly asking, “What does Sylvia think? What does Sylvia say about this?” In hindsight, it must have made Pam feel insecure about her contribution to the project, and I was ill-equipped to recognize and be sensitive to this. As such, she was very resistant to my ideas and frequently challenged me. Russell was aware of the tension between me and Pam, and he had made it clear that working through the challenges was important.
He said, “I need both of you. The two of you are key players in the organization. I believe you can work it out.” So he hired Dr. Latting to work with the two of us. She first met with each of us individually several times, then brought us together. I remember we met in this little office behind the reception desk, a kind of hidden nook.
At the core, Pam felt me to be overly critical, challenging processes that had been effective prior to my arrival. I was simply trying to understand what had been done and offer an alternative approach. I had to be clear with her.
“I’m not trying to replace you,” I assured her. “You were, after all, responsible for bringing the call center to DIR, but the industry is changing rapidly, and our contracts require more of DIR than past efforts. We had to move quickly to get this major study off the ground. These skills came naturally to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop to think about how my approach and thus my actions might have made you feel.”
After a few more meetings like this, I talked with Dr. Latting again. I remember pacing in my closet, talking to her on the phone, sobbing, and saying, “This isn’t fair! I don’t want to work this hard at a professional relationship. I don’t work this hard in my personal relationships! I don’t have time for this! It would be easier just to quit.”
She calmly replied, “Sylvia, no matter where you go, there will always be challenges. If you don’t figure this out now, the same problem will arise with someone else in the future. So it’s best to address it now. Believe me, what you do and learn through this process will serve you in all areas of your life.”
So I kept trying. I didn’t leave DIR; instead, I dug deep to persevere!
As my conversations with Pam continued, facilitated by Dr. Latting, I began to see how I might appear to Pam—here I was, a brand-new employee compared to her almost twenty years with the firm, coming in and questioning her. She had worked her way from receptionist all the way to vice president. I could see how it would be difficult for her to just accept me and, at the same time, face that DIR’s project needs were shifting beyond her experience and exposure.
The turning point came in an all-day session with Dr. Latting and the executive management team. In it, I shared how burdensome my workload was. It was hard to admit out loud, but I was overloaded, working twelve- to fourteen-hour days, seven days a week—partly because of Pam’s limited staff and skill deficits. This couldn’t continue.
When asked for my preferred solution, I paused, my heart beating rapidly, then said, “I think we need to give Pam other responsibilities and put someone else in charge of the survey operations.”
I looked at Pam and saw her wince. Clearly this was hard for her to hear . . . but she knew it was true. I believe it took her some time to accept it internally, but fortunately for me, during the meeting she immediately agreed.
This conversation was excruciatingly difficult, but I think the reason it went as smoothly as it did was because of the work we’d been doing with Dr. Latting. The two of us now have an amazing relationship, with full transparency and deep trust. It’s been that way for many years, and I share our example with folks all the time.
The process was not easy, though. Early on, I was often too emotional to even communicate. I was all sweaty palms and inward trembling, but that was my secret. No one else could tell, because outwardly I kept silent and still. I would have internal panic attacks invisible to others. Now, I’m better able to identify and process the emotions I’m experiencing. I check myself and the situation and silently ask, Is this me? Is this them? Do I need to pause and reflect? Or should I just speak up?
I’ve learned that I need to sit with statements that engender strong emotional reactions. Learning how to pause, assess what is boiling up inside me, and then come back to the conversation is a technique I’m still working on. Dr. Latting taught me that it’s all right to say, “Ouch! We need to pause for a moment . . .” and to give myself permission to say, “Let me sit with that. I don’t have a response right now.”
Difficult conversations are hard work, as a recent one with David, one of my direct reports, illustrates. David is also engaging in Pathfinders with me and others from the unit. He has been at DIR for nearly ten years and is a White male in his mid-forties. I’ve had an opportunity to work closer with David than with many others on my team. After hiring him, I trained him on some projects I was managing, particularly those of a major client out of New York. He has now become the main contact for that New York client.
He’s been a member of Pathfinders from the beginning, heavily engaged in the activities, and open to growing and calling things out that are not working. So, during a recent performance appraisal meeting, I shared feedback from the staff noting that he (David) was perceived as arrogant and patronizing.
I said to him, “In the name of Pathfinders, there is some feedback I’ve been getting about others’ perceptions of you. I don’t feel it would be fair to sugarcoat this, so I need to tell you that, to some, you’re coming across as arrogant and patronizing. Can you think of a situation where you might have given this impression?”
The Zoom room went quiet for several long seconds, then an obviously startled David responded, “I can’t imagine how that could be. This is very surprising. I’m dumbfounded!”
That reaction let me know he was totally unaware of how his interactions were being perceived by others. I said, “I know this must be difficult for you.”
He immediately became remorseful: “I am so sorry people believe this about me. What can I do to fix it?” We agreed that I would facilitate a conversation between him and one of the employees with this perception, and that we might also engage Dr. Latting to work with them as well.
David nodded and said, “Yes. I’m willing to do whatever needs to be done to change this perception, because that’s not the impression I want to give.”
“I appreciate that, David,” I replied. “I know this has been a lot for you. It’s been difficult for me to have this conversation, so it must be doubly difficult for you.” I decided it was appropriate to reference my journey with Pam. “I know that if I hadn’t dug in and done the difficult work with Pam several years ago, I would not still be here. And, as you know, I’m in a great place now with DIR. None of that would have been possible if Russell hadn’t hired Dr. Latting to work with Pam and me—I would have resigned. If the two of us hadn’t been committed to doing the hard work of repairing our relationship, my career trajectory here would have been very different.”
“I’ve heard you tell that story. And I know from Pathfinders that the work is hard, but the potential payoffs are great. So I’m willing to do whatever is necessary.”
DIR has recently been involved in evaluating a national racial-justice initiative. Fourteen communities were given funding to implement racial healing and narrative change programming to help the communities heal from serious race-based incidents. Most of these communities are navigating blatant racism that has resulted in murders and police brutality; all have suffered from systemic racism. We have been participant observers in this work since 2017, both as individuals who care deeply about the topic and as third-party evaluators.
We have been able to visit each of these communities and, in some, participate in their racial healing circles. This has given us an opportunity to see how racial tensions play out and how folks are trying to navigate through them. It’s given us exposure to how these different communities are dealing with seemingly intractable racial tensions yet bringing people together to engage in racial healing. It’s been really amazing!
But again, only a handful of us had this opportunity. We have many more employees who could benefit from our learning. I’m looking forward to being able to expose folks in other parts of the company to this kind of work.
I chose to join Pathfinders so that I could improve my skills as a participant in, and facilitator of, conversations about race. I try to listen more than I talk. This has a lot to do with me processing my emotions, but also because I believe deep listening is required. Over the years, I have become increasingly more comfortable being vulnerable, and I believe this has a lot to do with my grit and determination to work on myself. Beyond Pathfinders, I am also seeking additional training within the industry. Toward that end, I was recently selected by the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) of the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign as one of ten affiliate research scholars in their most recent nationwide cohort. The purpose of this is twofold: not only will it allow me to learn, grow, and engage with other scholars doing like-minded work, but it will also help shape the learning for other scholars.
In addition, I participated in a Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE) Learning Series through Expanding the Bench and the Advancing Culturally-responsive and Equitable (ACE) Evaluation Network. This training included a series of six workshops, one of which I co-led. I plan to offer a similar professional development series for our core staff, about how to conduct culturally responsive and equitable evaluation and assessment.
That said, my commitment to culturally responsive research dates back to my graduate school training, even though at that time I was not familiar with these terms (as they related to research and evaluation). I recall being in project meetings and asked to share my opinion about how what we were learning about the impact of poverty on low-income minorities was applicable to people of color. My initial reaction was, “I don’t like being singled out. My opinion isn’t representative of the African American experience or that of other persons of color.” In retrospect, I am thankful researchers were at least thinking about these issues, even if only informally. Still, I always caution others when seeking a global opinion from individuals.
Nearly twenty years later, there are countless examples of the absence of cultural considerations in research and evaluation, from design and planning to interpreting findings in published reports and to informing of policies. As a woman of color, a scholar, and a leader, I am deliberate about ensuring we are approaching all of DIR’s projects with a racial equity lens, employing a participatory approach to evaluation projects, and creating awareness with clients and partners about incorporating contextual factors into our methodologies.
Ultimately, my goal is to lead a firm of employees doing their own personal work around racial and social justice issues while engaging in culturally responsive work at the organizational level. Culturally responsive external work requires building an organizational environment where culturally responsive inner work is being done. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but I know our continued participation in Pathfinders will move us in the right direction!
Sylvia R. Epps, PhD, earned her doctorate in human development and family sciences from the University of Texas at Austin and completed postdoctoral studies at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Currently, she is president of Decision Information Resources, Inc. (DIR). DIR is an African American–owned research firm that provides contracted services to government agencies, foundations, and other research firms, including data collection, social, educational, and work force development research and evaluation, and technical assistance. As a woman of color, a scholar, and leader, Epps is deliberate about ensuring that DIR approaches all projects with a racial equity lens, employing a participatory approach to evaluation projects, and creating awareness with clients and partners about incorporating contextual factors into methodologies. She loves to travel, cook, and hang out with her son.
Dr. Epps first learned the Conscious Change skills via one-on-one coaching with Dr. Latting, then through group teambuilding at her organization.
