UW–Madison evaluator Nicole Bowman named one of Wisconsin’s most influential Native American leaders

March 15, 2024   |   By WCER Communications

Nicole Bowman, an associate scientist and evaluator with WCER's Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative (WEC), and a traditional community member and citizen of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of the Mohican Nation in Wisconsin, has been named one of the state's 32 most influential Native American Leaders for 2024 by Madison365, an independent news organization covering Black, Latino, Indigenous and Asian American communities in Madison and across Wisconsin since 2015.

Within WEC, Bowman is a subject matter expert in culturally responsive research, policy, and evaluation. Bowman also is an affiliate researcher for the Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) Center at the University of Illinois in Urbana. Through these appointments, she provides state, national, and international leadership on creating educational and career pathways for new academics; builds capacity, infrastructure, and resource supports through strategic, business, and operational planning; and develops culturally responsive skills, knowledge, and competencies through training, technical assistance, and scholarship in the form of publications and presentations.

Madison 365 notes Bowman in 2018 became the first Indigenous and youngest awardee of the American Evaluation Association’s Robert Ingle Service Award. She supports a large portfolio of projects advancing radical Indigenous and community-led scholarship with Tribal and non-Tribal governments and philanthropic, non-profit, and private-sector organizations nationally and internationally. By working with people and not on them, Bowman is known as a responsive and effective multi-jurisdictional, systems, and government subject matter expert where Tribal and non-Tribal agencies partner to improve outcomes, capacities, and competencies for more effective, responsive, and impactful programming.

Bowman also is a member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA), Madison 365 notes, and an international board member of EvalIndigenous and the International Evaluation Academy. She has been in elected or appointed leadership for AEA, CREA, Indigenous Peoples in Evaluation, and EvalIndigenous. She is coeditor and co-creator of a new permanent section for Indigenous scholarship called “Roots and Relations” in the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation (CJPE), and she co-edited a special global decolonization issue of the Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation.

Bowman has been or is a reviewer and/or board member for CJPE, New Directions in Evaluation, American Journal of Evaluation, and JMDE. Bowman earned her PhD in educational leadership and policy analysis from UW–Madison in 2015, a Master of Education from Lesley University in 1997, and a bachelor's degree in education from St. Norbert College in 1993.