Everstead exists to help you know your story
Background
Everstead offers thought partnership to help organizations demonstrate value.
Everstead Strategies was founded on a simple but powerful belief: that organizations do great work that create ripple effects in systems. These organizations, and the communities they serve, deserve to understand the magnitude and impact of those efforts. This starts with having the culture and capacity to weave organizational strategy, learning, and evaluation together to plan for the evidence you need before you need it.
After over two decades of working across various sectors, our founder Esther Nolton recognized a persistent gap. Evidence ecosystems are often fragmented. Organizations have data but struggle to organize and utilize them to produce actionable insights. Having a strong ecosystem is built on more than just heaps of data—it’s knowing what data are needed, how best to collect and manage it, and understanding when and how to use it.
Everstead Strategies was built to bridge that gap. Drawing on unique backgrounds and skills, Everstead functions as translator and facilitator helping organizations know and share the impact of their work to make the good they do even better. Everstead partners with executives and boards across sectors, helping them build sustainable learning and evaluation capacity, navigate complex policy questions, consider continuous improvement, and create evidence ecosystems that drive real impact.
Our Founder
Esther Nolton, PhD, MEd, CDMP
Principal Consultant & FounderWith a vision to build something meaningful, Esther brings a blend of strategic thinking and practical experience. She sets the tone for everything we do and keeps Everstead ahead of industry shifts and trends.
Affiliate Consultants
Denise Bellows Kumar, PhD
Dr. Denise Bellows Kumar (she/her) is a strategic research and evaluation leader with 20 years of experience helping organizations turn evidence and community insights into action. Her expertise spans participatory and mixed-methods research, strategic learning, community engagement, and translating complex data into actionable findings. Denise has led initiatives for government, philanthropic, nonprofit, and private-sector organizations addressing public health, social and economic mobility, and community wellbeing. She has published peer-reviewed research and led regional studies informing policy, philanthropy, and community action. Denise holds a Ph.D. in Behavioral and Community Health from the University of Maryland and a BoardSource Certificate in Nonprofit Board Consulting.
Tatiana E. Bustos, PhD
Dr. Tatiana Bustos (she/her) is a strategic, people-centered evaluation and learning leader, award-winning author with more than a decade of experience across public health, behavioral health, community development, and systems change. She helps organizations navigate complex work and use evidence, community priorities, and lived experience to inform strategy and decision-making. Her scholarship focuses on engagement in research and evaluation, participatory dissemination, community-research partnerships, and implementation. Tatiana is a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Network Fellow and serves in national and state advisory roles focused on advancing economic mobility, community-driven systems change, and transformative evaluation practice.
Tiffany Caldas, MSW
Ms. Tiffany Caldas (she/they/he) is a social welfare strategist. Through her firm, Empactify, she partners with organizations to design and implement projects that advance social wellbeing—spanning economic and workforce development, youth organizing, and community engagement. Her expertise includes strategic planning, organizational infrastructure, community feedback processes, and program design. She led the embRACE LA initiative, which established the City of Los Angeles' first Office of Racial Equity. Tiffany holds a Master's in Social Welfare from UCLA, a Certificate in Strategic Management from Georgetown University, and training in Intergroup Dialogue facilitation. Outside of work, she dances, draws, and makes collages.
Brian Nolton, MS
Mr. Brian Nolton (he/him) is a data scientist with 14 years of experience teaching high school mathematics, statistics, and data science in Fairfax County Public Schools (VA). His expertise spans processing, analyzing, and reporting data in R and Python, with applied work across electronic health records, educational testing and assessment data, and food insecurity research. Brian is particularly interested in emerging technology, academic access and outcomes, and the responsible use of big data and AI in various contexts. He holds a Bachelor’s in Mathematics (CSU Stanislaus) and a Master's in Data Science (University of Virginia), bringing a teacher's clarity to translating complex analyses into insights educators, administrators, and organizations can actually use to inform strategic decisions.
Jeremiah-Alec (Jeremy) Piña, PhD
Dr. Jeremy Piña (he/him) is an applied research and evaluation specialist with more than a decade of experience supporting educational institutions, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations in transforming complex data into actionable insights. His expertise includes research design, survey and assessment development, psychometric validation, advanced quantitative analysis, and mixed-methods evaluation. Jeremy has led multidisciplinary teams and supported national initiatives focused on education, student well-being, workforce development, and organizational learning. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Georgia and brings a collaborative, utilization-focused approach to producing rigorous findings that clients can understand and use.
ALyx (Alyssa) Tonsing-Carter, PhD
Dr. Alyx (Alyssa) Tonsing-Carter (they/she) is the founder and sole consultant for Regenerative Leadership Strategies, LLC with a mission to develop regenerative conditions within organizations to improve culture and drive results. Starting their career conducting research with a PhD in pharmacology, they now apply the scientific method to help organizations embed data-driven and human-centered decision making. For the last 4 years, they have been using data analysis, evaluation, organizational development, process improvement, mediation, and change management to improve the learning and inclusion cultures at organizations including the National Institute on Aging and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Mr. Nathan (Nate) Varnell (he/him) is a research and evaluation professional who advances data-driven decision-making across government agencies, community organizations, and foundation-funded research. His expertise spans mixed-methods evaluation design, quantitative analysis, survey methods, interpersonal stakeholder facilitation, and sensemaking. Nate has led performance audits of federal agencies, evaluated housing and transportation community planning initiatives, and led cross-sector research in public health data governance. He brings a culturally responsive, capacity-building approach concerned with what works, whom it works for, and the conditions that give way to action. He holds an MPA from GW and is the 2026 recipient of the AEA Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator Award.
Nathan (Nate) Varnell, MPA
While these folks are Everstead’s most frequent collaborators, we have a deep bench of consultants that we regularly reach out to according to project scope and needs. Join our Consultant Database below to be considered for these opportunities in the future!
Dr. Rhonda Williams (she/her) is an evaluation and learning strategist with more than 25 years of experience designing evidence systems that help organizations understand whether investments are producing their intended outcomes. Her expertise includes evaluation design, shared measurement, data governance, quantitative analysis, and organizational learning across philanthropic, public, and nonprofit settings. Rhonda's work focuses on connecting evidence to decision-making, helping leaders strengthen strategy, accountability, and systems change efforts. She has led large-scale evaluation initiatives across education, workforce, and community systems and serves on the boards of the American Evaluation Association and the Texas Evaluation Network.
Rhonda Williams, PhD
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