Ella Gifford-Hawkins

Ella Gifford-Hawkins has more than 19 years of experience as the leader of a county Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. During her tenure as manager of the Larimer County Works Program, Gifford-Hawkins led her team of 14 staff to be one of the first four sites in the nation to implement Goal4 It!^™, a science-based coaching model. For this model, Gifford-Hawkins and her team used the Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI²) framework—an evidence-driven approach to innovation and change in organizations. In addition, Gifford-Hawkins and her team worked with TuaPath, a local technology provider, to develop My Journey to Success, an online platform to support coaches and program participants. She and her team used the LI² framework to continuously improve and refine the platform, and to adapt the platform to serve their customers remotely. Gifford-Hawkins routinely presented at state and national research conferences on the innovative work of her program.

At Mathematica, Gifford-Hawkins applies her deep understanding of human services programs to help state, local, and tribal practitioners use research and analytic methods to inform decision making and improve program quality. As a stakeholder on the Pathways Clearinghouse systematic review, she has experience translating research into practical applications and identifying strategies to make research findings more accessible to practitioners. She has participated in panels for Pathways at the National Association of Welfare Research and Statistics (NAWRS) and the National TANF Directors Annual Meetings convened by the Administration for Children and Families. She provides critical insight about the information human services leaders and providers need to better serve families and children, and she routinely consults with project teams on designing dissemination strategies best aligned with their audiences.

Gifford-Hawkins joined Mathematica in January 2021. She holds a B.A. in Spanish from Colorado State University. From 1988 to 1992, she served as a cooperative/community development volunteer in the Peace Corps on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. Gifford-Hawkins worked with her counterparts to understand local challenges and test solutions that worked for them. Her Peace Corps experience taught her the importance of listening, reflecting, and tapping into the experience and knowledge of the people she was serving.