May Featured Author | Dr. Nina Sabarre
Welcome to our featured author series where we share different points of view on advancing social justice and DEI+B efforts through the ever evolving fields of multicultural organizational development, human resources, implementation science, equitable evaluation and applied research, improvement science, learning science, performance measurement, and team science.
Each month we highlight someone in this work we admire and have learned from in the past. Our hope is that you find new perspectives, ideas, and insights to inspire and challenge the way you live and work.
Dr. Nina Sabarre
Founder & CEO, Intention 2 Impact, Inc.
Nina R. Sabarre, PhD is the Founder + CEO of Intention 2 Impact, Inc. With over a decade of experience delivering innovative research and evaluation for clients in international development and philanthropy, Nina thrives at the intersection of evaluation + entrepreneurship. She has consulted for a wide variety of cross-sector institutions ranging from USAID, to the World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, Open Society Foundations, TED, the Elevate Prize Foundation, Earthjustice, the Asian Pacific Islander Council, and The California Endowment, to name a few. Her work focuses on equitable evaluation for strategic grantmaking and systems change. Dr. Sabarre is also an adjunct professor at American University teaching graduate-level courses in Evaluation Approaches & Design.
Why do you do the work you do?
I have lived in my head since I was a little girl — trying to make sense of a world that was never meant to be sensical. I was always obsessed with drawing connections, identifying patterns, and making meaning out of complexities. I love using data to understand the value of things and designing frameworks to understand how pieces (i.e., people, programs, communities) fit together in the bigger picture of society. And if I’m being completely honest, there is a lot of ego in that motivation!
After more than a decade in the field and a PhD in Evaluation and Applied Research, I now understand that sensemaking and problem solving are not solely in the hands of evaluators. Our role is to systematically and equitably shine a light for others to use data to positively impact all people and the planet.
While I was first drawn to the methods and science of how to design and implement evaluations, I am now more interested in the relationships between evaluators and social change agents, and the influence we have as evaluators to produce useful, compelling, and impactful work.
For me, this manifests in evalpreneurship (the intersection of evaluation and entrepreneurship). I spend most of my time thinking about the business of evaluation as a knowledge industry that can be used to advance social impact and equity. It is not only important to consider how our services are designed and delivered (i.e., supply), but also how they are valued and used by those who need it (i.e., demand). While I still love doing the work, what really gets me out of bed in the morning is leading Intention 2 Impact, Inc. (I2I), a social impact consulting firm that not only delivers high-quality work, but facilitates meaningful use and strategic learning for purpose-driven organizations.
What technique, method, tool, theory or practice would you like to highlight that is promising and/or proven for advancing social justice?
My business partner, Dr. Kathleen Doll, and I are both part of the 2023 Emergent Learning Cohort, and it has been a game changer in our philanthropy work. Emergent Learning (EL) is a set of principles and practices that help a group of people achieves shared goals by creating a shared line of sight, making their thinking visible, experimenting together, and actively learning from successes and failures.
We believe facilitating EL is helpful to advance social justice because it translates complex, lofty goals into clear, concrete hypotheses that unpack assumptions and make biases explicit. Here is a great overview of the EL framework for anyone interested in learning more.
What are a couple of practices, resources, and/or tools that help you live more to your values on a daily?
I regularly practice breathwork, which is a method of deep, diaphragmatic breathing that can be used to balance the body and mind. Breathwork helps me quiet the voices in my head so I can listen deeply to my intuition. Somehow, my inner self always knows the next right thing to do. It is an incredibly powerful practice that allows me to unlock creativity, authenticity, grace, and wisdom. It really feels like a superpower! I was first introduced to breathwork through Libby Smith, who runs online group sessions for evaluators and other knowledge work practitioners.
What are some books you wish everyone would read?
This is a hard question! Partly because most of my reading these days is contemporary romance...
One book that really stuck with me was Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I read it in Spring of 2020. During such an unsettling time, it gave me the courage to unlearn limiting beliefs that kept me small and the freedom to be unabashedly myself.
Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book:
“I am a human being, meant to be in perpetual becoming. My goal is not to remain the same but to live in such a way that each day, year, moment, relationship, conversation, and crisis is the material I use to become a truer, more beautiful version of myself.”
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