Senior Manager, Impact and Evaluation

Position Summary 

The Senior Manager, Impact and Evaluation ensures the Science Center's programs are nationally leading, transformative, and relevant, and that their impact is measured and shared with rigor and clarity. This role owns the organization-wide framework for defining, collecting, analyzing, and communicating program impact across innovation, entrepreneurship, STEM education, workforce development, and inclusive economic growth. 

The Senior Manager is a strategic partner from the earliest stage of funding conversations through final reporting. They work alongside the Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives and Government Partnerships, to develop compelling proposals, while working with Principal Investigators (PIs) and program leads to build evaluation plans, logic models, and theories of change that are rigorous, ambitious, and built for long-term success. 

The Senior Manager will lead an initial audit of what data the Science Center collects today, will build and maintain the organization’s impact database, and will conduct an annual evaluation of Science Center programs. They coordinate closely with the Grants Manager while leveraging support personnel to design surveys and collection tools that monitor grant performance and meet reporting obligations. 

The Senior Manager works across the organization to translate raw data into key insights and a compelling, evidence-based narrative of how the Science Center drives change. They partner with Marketing and Communications to tell the Science Center’s story, with program teams to communicate the impact of their programs, and with the Grants team to pursue new funding and meet reporting requirements. Their work produces content that technical partners and the general public can both understand, for use in grant reporting, internal and external communications, and leadership materials. 

Essential Functions 

Funder Engagement and Pre-Award Evaluation Design 

• Partner with the Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives and Government Partnerships, in early-stage funding discussions; listen actively to what funders expect in terms of impact, outcomes, and evaluation expectations. 
• Shape the impact strategy for new opportunities from the outset, aligning proposed outcomes with Science Center strengths and positioning programs as national models in their field. 
• Work with PIs and program leads during pre-award to develop evaluation plans, logic models, theories of change, and key output and outcome metrics. 
• Draft and review evaluation sections, data management plans, and impact narratives for proposals to federal agencies (e.g., NSF, NIH, EDA, DoD), state agencies, and foundations. 
• Scope and budget evaluation activities, including when to use internal capacity versus an external evaluator. 

Performance Evaluation and Data Integrity 

• Lead an initial audit of all Science Center programs: what data is collected today, how it is collected and stored, at what cadence is it collected, and where new measures can further strengthen the Science Center's impact story. 
• Establish an organization-wide impact measurement framework with common definitions, core indicators, and shared metrics that roll up across departments. 
• Recommend high-value metrics grounded in program operations, balanced with staff capacity and diverse participants ranging from students to startup companies. 
• Develop data collection protocols, data dictionaries, and standard procedures; train staff on data entry and quality expectations. 

Program Data Ownership and Organizational Stewardship 

• Design, build, and maintain a program data dashboard that serves as the single source of truth for all program data at any point in time. 
• Clearly document the update cadence for each data source (e.g., quarterly, semester, annual) and the owner responsible for data contributions. 
• Keep the dashboard current on a calendar-year cycle and fully updated ahead of the annual report. 
• Partner with IT and vendors on data systems, integrations, and tools (e.g., CRM, survey platforms, visualization software). 

Grant Performance Monitoring and Compliance Coordination 

• Design surveys and data collection