Cindy M. Walker, PhD

Dr. Walker is an accomplished data scientist and program evaluation expert with 25+ years of experience of working on projects and overseeing projects and people at all levels and stages. She has led hundreds of analytics projects across health, education, and social services. As RAC’s founder and Principal, she brings the needed leadership and the ability to translate complex data into actionable policy insights.

She has:

• Served as director and lead consultant on hundreds of research analytic projects for a wide variety of industries including large school districts, higher education, healthcare, non-profit organizations, and industry.
• Worked on multi-year studies funded by large federal or state grants. This has included National Institute of Health funded grants to develop the Numeric Understanding in Medicine Instrument.
• Conducted research for Microsoft to determine if the scaling of their certification exams could be improved.
• Authored dozens of peer-reviewed academic publications (see Google Scholar).
• Co-Authored the definitive guide Categorical Data Analysis for the Behavioral and Social Sciences.
• Served as Professor of Educational Psychology and the Director of the Consulting Office for Research and Evaluation (CORE) for the University of Wisconsin System.
• Served as Vice President of Division D of American Educational Research Association (AERA
• Taught numerous courses in scale development, psychometrics, measurement, assessment, program evaluation, statistics, and research design.
• A unique ability and qualifications from her academic and teaching experience to simplify complex ideas so that they are more easily understood, and recognize when simple solutions vs complex solutions are needed.