Thank You and Happy New Year!

A Message From Team CRC

All of us at CRC wish to send out a hearty **THANK YOU **and HAPPY NEW YEAR to our many clients, partners, collaborators, and friends. We thank you for helping our firm to have another successful year in 2017, in which we were honored to help organizations and agencies – large and small, local and national – to demonstrate and tell their stories of the important work they do. We look forward to continuing our work with you in the new year!

We’ll remember 2017 for many reasons related to CRC’s projects, but a very few not totally work-related highlights were:

Learning to row thanks to Taj and the Baltimore Rowing Club at Learn to Row Day.

Celebrating Taj’s 50th birthday!

Sheila, Dana, and Mandi presenting to a packed house at Evaluation 2017, after first workshopping their uber useful material on interactive dashboards at EERS 2017.

2018 promises to be a bigger year all-around, and we wanted to each share something we’re looking forward to:

_**Taj: **__I’m looking forward to continuing to develop our portfolio of pieces that use data to powerfully create stories that tell the impact of the work our clients do. This work, combining solid data analysis and beautiful design and visualization strategies, is really inspiring to me and to our clients. I’m excited about attending frank and Comnet18. _

Sheila: 2017 was a great year in which I spent time with awesome researchers and evaluators at EERS, AEA, The Regional National Service Trainings, and Comnet conferences, got valuable feedback from my coworkers and other colleagues, consumed lots of muffins, wrote a ton of proposals, had restorative Netflix binging sessions, and hung with old and new doggo friends! I was also honored to join the EERS and the Baltimore Area Evaluators (BAE) boards last year. In 2018, Im looking forward to contributing more to the Eval community, improving my research and dataviz skills, networking more often, and learning from my peers. Im also on a mission to complete my paint by numbers project and read more books!

Jill: In 2018 I’m looking forward to continue collaborating closely and creatively with my CRC coworkers to work effectively for our clients (and have some fun while doing it). There’s a lot on my plate this year at my “other day job” at Make Studio, a small nonprofit that has a lot in common with many of CRC’s clients. I have a wonderful opportunity coming up to learn and apply my skills to benefit both CRC and Make Studio by participating in the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations' (NCUSCR) Professional Fellows Program Spring 2018 trip to China/Mongolia. I will be visiting the World of Art Brut Culture (WABC) in Shanghai, and presenting on program evaluation to a group of Chinese organizational professionals – with a translator present, of course!

Dana: D_uring this year, I’m looking forward to working on new and existing projects and learning new things from them. I plan to build upon my existing skill set and continue my learning in data visualization and programming languages by either taking online courses or by attending workshops at conferences. This past year, I had several opportunities to share my knowledge and skills with our clients and others in the community and the experience has been truly rewarding. I hope this year brings many more such opportunities where I can educate and share my insights with others. Lastly, being a coffee enthusiast, I plan to keep track of my coffee consumption for mere amusement, who knows maybe Ill even make a fun visual to share at the end of the year. Heres a fun fact: Did you know that Ludwig Van Beethoven drank a cup of coffee every morning made of precisely 60 coffee beans . Now, imagine being his barista, Yikes!_

_Mandi: _I pondered what my resolutions should be for this year being more active, health conscious, learning a new skill, traveling somewhere new, etc., when it dawned on me whats the point of even coming up with a resolution this year? I mean lets be real if youre anything like me, you set grandiose goals at the beginning of the year only to watch them fall to the wayside within a month or so of making them. Instead, this year, I plan to remain fully present in every moment and open to all possibilities. I want to be mindful. I want to be my best self. I want to enjoy each and every day. If you want to be more mindful in the new year, too, here are some articles to help with that: A Guide To Mindfulness At Work The Mindfulness Guide for the Super Busy: How to Live Life to the Fullest

Kevin: Here’s to a healthy, happy New Year for everyone. This year I am looking forward to another year of swimcations. That’s right, I don’t really take vacations anymore. Instead, I fly to locations around the world where I train for competitive swimming while working a full day each day. I am removing the normal hustle and bustle of everyday life, getting my work done remotely, putting in extra swim training, and seeing new destinations. This month is a long weekend in Coronado, CA where I hope to meet ghosts at the Hotel Del Coronado.

We hope you have something(s) you’re really looking forward to this year, too! We’d love to hear about it – leave us a comment! [caption id=“attachment_61497” align=“aligncenter” width=“432”]

CRC’ers at our annual holiday lunch. Not pictured is Taj, because she was enjoying the holidays in Paris![/caption]