Chelimsky, Eleanor

Chelimsky is an independent evaluation consultant. She has more than 30 years of experience conducting evaluations and consulting for national and international organizations on evaluation practice and policy. From 1966 to 1970, she was an economic analyst for the U.S. Mission to NATO, charged with statistical, demographic, and cost-benefit studies. From 1970 to 1980, she worked at MITRE Corporation, where she directed work in evaluation planning and policy analysis, criminal justice, and research management. Between 1980 and 1994, she was Assistant Comptroller General for Program Evaluation and directed the U.S. General Accounting Office's Program Evaluation and Methodology Division, whose mission was to serve the U.S. Congress through evaluations of government policies and programs and through the development and demonstration of methods for evaluating those policies and programs. She has also assisted many other countries—Canada, China, Columbia, France, Germany, Malaysia, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—in instituting their own evaluation organizations.

Chelimsky's contributions to the theory and practice of evaluation are substantial. She is Coeditor of Evaluation for the 21st Century: A Handbook (with William R. Shadish), a member of the editorial board for the Sage Research Series in Evaluation, and serves on the editorial boards of Policy Studies Review, Policy Studies Review Annual, New Directions for Program Evaluation, and the new international journal Evaluation. She was President (1980) of the Evaluation Research Society and President (1994) of the American Evaluation Association and was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 1994. She is a member of the advisory boards for the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration and Carnegie Mellon's John Heinz School of Public Policy. She received the 1982 Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Award for Government Service from the Evaluation Research Society, the 1985 GAO Distinguished Service Award, the 1987 GAO Meritorious Executive Award, the 1991 Comptroller General's Award (GAO's top honor), and a 1994 National Public Service Award.