Millett, Ricardo A.

(b. 1945, Panama City, Florida). Ph.D., M.S.W. Social Planning and Research, B.A. Economics, Brandeis University.

Millett is President of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a grant-making foundation whose goal is to increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities in the metropolitan area, including the opportunity to contribute to decisions affecting them. He is a veteran foundation professional with deep experience and expertise in the areas of foundation performance evaluation and strategic planning. Previously, he was Director of Evaluation at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Senior Vice President of Planning and Resource management for the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, Deputy Associate Commissioner of the Department of Social Services for Massachusetts, and Senior Analyst at Abt Associates. He has served as Director for Neighborhood Housing and Development for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Executive Director of Roxbury Multi-service Center, Associate Professor of Research and Evaluation at Atlanta University, and Director of the Martin Luther King Center at Boston University.

Throughout his career, Millett has worked to achieve social and economic justice for all people. He has focused on making the tools of evaluation more relevant, useful, and user-friendly to nonprofits and foundations. His efforts are apparent in a number of manuals he authored while at the Kellogg Foundation, perhaps most especially his work on cluster evaluation. He has actively supported initiatives to build pipelines for evaluators of color as well as providing support for the development of international evaluation associations.

His work has been influenced by Michael Q. Patton, Ernest R. House, Paulo Freire, and Berger and Luckman's seminal text The Social Construction of Reality.

Millett is on the Board of Directors of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. For his contributions to evaluation, he was awarded the American Evaluation Association's Myrdal Award in 2001 and the Michigan Evaluation Association Award in 2002.