Meet the ELEVATE Advisors
ELEVATE is guided by a visionary group of philanthropic leaders who are reimagining how funders engaged in learning and evaluation relate to place—not as a passive backdrop, but as a dynamic, contextual driver of strategy, insight, and change.
These advisors bring deep experience, bold thinking, and a commitment to listening, learning, and co-creating, ensuring that place-based learning and evaluation becomes a pathway for shared growth and action. By centering local knowledge and fostering learning across geographic, organizational, and other boundaries that too often keep insights siloed, these leaders are advancing the field of place-based learning and evaluation. Their guidance ensures that ELEVATE stays grounded in the field while remaining bold in its vision.
BRITA BLESI
Brita Blesi leads the Learning and Evaluation team at Houston Endowment, where she partners with colleagues and community organizations to develop philanthropic strategies, understand community impact, and build capacity. Since joining Houston Endowment in 2020, she has worked to ensure that evaluation is an approachable, inclusive, and culturally responsive tool to drive learning and decision making. Before joining Houston Endowment, Brita spent over a decade in Minneapolis working as an evaluation and research consultant and as an internal evaluator for nonprofit organizations. Her work focused on using data and evaluation to inform strategy, drive continuous improvement, and advance equity.
HUILAN Y. KRENN
Huilan Y. Krenn is the Director of Learning & Impact at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where she leads evaluation strategy and system building to support efforts that advance thriving children, working families, and equitable communities. Since joining the foundation in 2002, she has held roles spanning evaluation, education, and innovation, collaborating with staff, grantees, and evaluators to improve philanthropic practice. Prior to WKKF, she held multiple research and evaluation roles at a large child welfare agency and taught at Western Michigan University. Huilan served on the board of the American Evaluation Association and has published widely on evaluation and early childhood education. She holds a Ph.D. in evaluation, research, and measurement, an M.A. in educational leadership from Western Michigan University, and degrees in English and TESOL from Nankai University in China.
STEPH SCHILLING
Steph (they/them) currently holds the role of Knowledge Manager at Headwaters Foundation, where they led the Foundation’s learning and evaluation activities and acts as grants manager/system administrator for Headwaters’ grants management system. Steph has a diverse set of experiences and a career that could most easily be summarized as helping busy people and places operate smoothly. Originally from the Sonoran desert of Arizona, their passion for the natural world and sense of adventure has led them to work in a variety of roles ranging from studying bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota, FL, to organizing farmer’s markets in food deserts in Tucson, to supervising at a luxury hotel in Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico. They hold a bachelor’s of science in environmental science. Steph believes in standing up for the most vulnerable among us and is excited to learn from Headwaters’ staff and partners. In their time off, you can probably find them in the mountains, at the thrift store, or glued to a good book.
KIMBERLY SPRING
Dr. Kimberly Spring is the Director of Research and Evaluation at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, where she leads efforts to advance culturally responsive and equity-focused practices and to develop evidence and data for programs, policies and practices that support the well-being of children, youth and young adults. Her work has focused on the areas of child and youth development, family economic success, economic inclusion, community change, social and organizational networks, and civil and political engagement. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2013, she worked as a research and policy analyst at the federal agency, the Corporation for National and Community Service. She received her PhD in Sociology from the New School for Social Research in New York City.