Dr. Erika Van Buren is the founder and CEO of Line of Sight, a consulting firm that supports leaders, organizations, and systems to strengthen their capacity for improvement and equitable impact. She has served as a seasoned independent consultant in service to the non-profit, philanthropic, and government sectors for over 20 years. During her professional tenure, Dr. Van Buren has cultivated expertise in the areas of evaluation capacity building, applied research, program and systems change design strategy, evaluation, and performance management for human service delivery systems. She received her doctorate in clinical child psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has dedicated her career to studying and improving community-based services for populations of Color within and across mental health, child welfare, justice and other public systems. Prior to Line of Sight, Dr. Van Buren served as the Chief Innovation Officer for First Place for Youth - an organization based in Oakland, CA and nationally recognized for its focus on learning, data use, evidence generation and the delivery of results-based care in education and employment services for transition-age foster youth. At First Place, she was responsible for leading the design, utilization, and maintenance of the organization’s performance management systems and structures, and providing leadership and oversight of the organization’s national scaling efforts. She crafted and implemented the internal and external evaluation agenda for the agency, disseminated knowledge that was leveraged for policy advocacy and reform, and worked closely with program and system leadership to identify and roll-out best and evidence-supported strategies to improve practice and the child welfare system’s impact on transition-age foster youth. As a thought leader in this space, Dr. Van Buren has been recognized as a Ford Foundation fellow, a LEAP of Reason Ambassador, and as an Annie E. Casey Foundation Leadership Fellow.