AnnaMaria McCutcheon

AnnaMaria McCutcheon specializes in operations and project management, business process analysis and improvement, cost analysis, and evaluation-related technical assistance to improve human services programs. She uses operations and project management best practices to ensure high quality, timely, and cost-effective projects. She uses the LI²(Learn, Innovate, Improve) framework to analyze business processes and provide evidence-based technical assistance to human services programs. She uses rigorous evaluation designs and methods to conduct process and cost analyses and provide evaluation-related technical assistance to programs.

She currently serves as the Deputy Director of U.S. Department of Education’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory. In this role, she directly oversees the operations and project teams to meet client and stakeholder needs. Her extensive experience working on education projects includes eight years in various capacities on the REL Peer Review project and several years managing and leading tasks on the What Works Clearinghouse project. Ms. McCutcheon also served on the Cost Analysis Standards Panel in 2020 with experts from research organizations, academic institutions, and other agencies, to develop a set of standards for economic evaluation of educational and other social programs.

She has led multiple business process analysis tasks to improve service delivery in workforce development and cash assistance programs in Philadelphia, California, and other areas. She was the evaluation-related technical assistance lead for the PROMISE evaluation and the site liaison for the New York State PROMISE program. In that role, she oversaw randomized program enrollment, helped to develop information technology systems, and analyzed program implementation and costs. She previously managed the Workforce Investment Act Gold Standard Evaluation and the What Works Clearinghouse. For the Clearinghouse, she managed a high-profile open data initiative that made education data more transparent for the public. She also led and participated in program cost studies across multiple areas, such as child welfare, labor, disability, and preventing teen pregnancy.

McCutcheon, who joined Mathematica in 2007, holds an M.B.A. and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). She presented her work on the What Works Clearinghouse open data initiative at the 2016 SREE conference. She presented on various business process analysis, human-centered design, and communications strategies at the National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics (July 2019), the TANF State Director’s Summit (September 2019), and the Equip and Practice in Community virtual learning community (April 2020).