Susanna Dilliplane, PhD, is APEP’s Deputy Director. She brings expertise in social science methods, media impact assessment, and communications and behavior change theory to her work evaluating social and policy change initiatives. Drawing on her background in qualitative and quantitative methods – including experimental design, survey research, and content analysis – she works to optimize evaluation designs, data collection, and data analysis, with a focus on collaborating closely with clients to ensure evaluation findings are useful, actionable, and appropriately contextualized.
Her recent portfolio includes: leading APEP’s evaluation of Independent Television Service’s Women and Girls Lead Global project, a documentary film-based initiative implemented with 47 NGO partners in 5 countries; serving as primary author of APEP’s landscape scan for Fund for Shared Insight, examining how funders and nonprofits meaningfully connect with the communities they intend to benefit; serving as lead methodologist and analyst for APEP’s evaluation of the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project; and developing M&E tools for The Expectations Project.
Before joining the Aspen Institute in 2014, Susanna served as an independent consultant and as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. In those roles, she collaborated with NGOs and social scientists on diverse research projects, including studies evaluating the impact of news media and media-based interventions on knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Previously, she served as editor for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a non-partisan public policy organization focused on political, economic, and social issues that impact African Americans and other communities of color. She holds a B.A. in political science from Barnard College, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in communications from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Her happy place is with animals, helping out at a local farm animal rescue and testing hypotheses about how many rescues can comfortably co-exist in a Philadelphia rowhouse with her and her husband (evidence to date suggests five cats and one flamboyant bunny).
