Yvonne Belanger

Yvonne Belanger is the Director of Learning & Evaluation, supporting a culture and practice of learning alongside our grantees and using evidence to inform our decisions, advance equity, and hold ourselves accountable for progress and impact. Barr’s Learning and Evaluation team also supports cross-program learning about how to partner with grantees most effectively and how philanthropy can best support change. She is a national thought leader on equitable learning in philanthropy, writing and speaking at forums and conferences including the Center for Effective Philanthropy, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, the American Evaluation Association, the National Center for Family Philanthropy, and others. Yvonne also currently co-chairs the Fund for Shared Insight, a national funder collaborative seeking to improve philanthropy by centering the people and communities at the heart of our work.

Yvonne began her philanthropy career in 2017 at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where she served as Senior Program Officer for Measurement and Evaluation, building evidence on approaches to improve college success for low-income, first-generation students and students of color. Prior to philanthropy, Yvonne worked in a variety of roles in higher education, founding the assessment and evaluation department at Duke University Libraries and its Center for Instructional Technology, and managing federally funded digital library projects at Syracuse University’s Information Institute. She also served on the Board of Directors for the Queen Anne Helpline in Seattle, a social sector nonprofit which provides emergency assistance for housing, food and basic needs. At the outset of her career, she taught middle school math.

Yvonne holds a M.S. in Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation with a concentration on applied research from the School of Education at Syracuse University and is a graduate of St. John’s College, Annapolis. She is also an alumna of the National Science Foundation's Summer Evaluation Institute and University of North Carolina’s BRIDGES Academic Leadership Program. A native of Virginia, she enjoys playing the piano and traveling with her husband and children.