My specialty is translating technical spreadsheets into non-technical graphs, reports, and slideshows. Services range from 60-minute webinars to multi-day workshops to multi-year research projects.
The most effective structure is a full-day customized training followed by a full day of onsite coaching. Your staff learn the theory on the first day and apply what they’ve learned on the second day. Share your sample slides and publications with me, and I’ll design a custom training agenda to take your staff to the next level.
Design
I design charts and dashboards from scratch through freelance projects of all sizes. Already have reports, charts, and slides, but need a makeover? I redesign existing visuals and provide written feedback so you can improve your future projects. I have provided feedback on existing publications, crunched the numbers and designed visualizations based on the organization’s raw data files, and designed one-pagers and dashboards.
By popular demand, I now offer one-on-one coaching in data management, data analysis, and data visualization. We sit side-by-side in your office, talk over the phone, brainstorm through email, and screenshare in Skype and Google Hangout to polish your graphs.
Applied Research
My research consulting services span the entire data lifecycle: from planning for data collection, to designing surveys and instruments, to partnering with agencies to select databases and software programs for data storage, to analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, to report writing. These projects range in length from one-time engagements to multi-year applied research and program evaluation projects.
I’ve worked with 66 different organizations on 102 different projects over the past two years. I’ve partnered with everyone: grantmakers seeking to communicate about their grants, grantees seeking to demonstrate their impact, government agencies seeking to share their main findings with policymakers, professional societies seeking to provide training to their members, and more.
“This was by far the best professional development opportunity I’ve had in the last three years. Thanks so much for the hands-on learning opportunities. I left this workshop feeling that I could immediately implement what I learned, which is rare!”“This was the best workshop we’ve ever had at our organization.”
“Ann did an amazing job. She was engaging and an excellent facilitator. This workshop has inspired a lot of confidence in my ability to visualize data and I would be interested in seeing what Ann would have planned for an intermediate or more advanced workshop on this topic.”
“I came into the workshop thinking I already had a good foundation in data visualization but it turns out I still had lots to learn! Thanks for the great tips and for so expertly walking us through the new charts you introduced.”
“I really liked having everyone working from the same Excel doc prepared ahead of time so you have all the lessons there after the training. I’ve seen it done so poorly in other trainings where everyone is working from different sets of data and it makes learning anything tangible impossible.”
“Really excellent and a totally worthwhile investment of time. Ann’s humor, adaptability to her audience, vast knowledge, creativity and hands-on approach made this one of the best workshops I’ve ever attended.”
“One of the most useful things I came away with was to sketch out my options before putting anything into Excel. I had never done that before and it was really helpful to stop and really think about the best way to present the data and having a rough design in mind.”
“The pace of the workshop was exactly what I hoped for. You provided just the right amount of lecture-style content, great visuals, and then the hands-on practice that we all need to help us retain all the information you provided. Thank you!!”
“Ann is truly an expert, but there are lots of experts. What makes Ann spectacular is the simplicity of the strategy and tactics she uses in analyzing and visualizing data, the incredible impact that those strategies and techniques deliver, and the way in which she teaches and harnesses simple, everyday graphical tools and tricks to get the job done.”
“I just watched your UVA Webinar on communicating data through graphs, and thought it was superb. I’ve done data analysis in the past and made a lot of the mistakes that you showed us today, but really liked some of those solutions that you showed, and ways to make the data more readable and digestible for your audience.”
“I’ve already been incorporating some of your tips into my reports and am getting positive feedback on the results.”
“Ann did a wonderful job. A great mix of high-level overview and details to keep my interest and provide relevant and useful information.”
“Thank you so much for all your work on the charts. They came out looking really great! I really appreciate your commitment to helping us meet our deadline. We are making the presentation to the client next week. We’re so glad to have a professional looking presentation!”
“Just wanted to share with you a few sample graphics (not real data) that I developed using some of the principles I learned from you. I have found them so helpful and honestly look at graphs in a completely different way now.”
“Ann, I have to say, I’ve participated in a lot of webinars, and you did yours impeccably well, in terms of how you explained concepts, paced things, and the examples you included. Well done.”
“My new eval specialist here took your AEA webinar. She’s convinced she’s going to drastically improve all my lame charts now.”
“Ann was amazing! This was one of the best webinars I’ve attended.”
“Thanks to you, I am feeling more and more confident about my developing Excel skills!”
“Very helpful. Learned about quite a few options within Excel that, honestly, I had no idea about prior to the training.”
“Thank you very much for the great Excel training. I have received overwhelmingly positive feedback and the staff seems very excited to start applying what they learned to their work. We also appreciate your ability to fit so much material into a few hours.”
“I thought you did a really good job handling… the multiple audiences and the range in skill level of the participants. The datasets were also appropriate examples and we could easily understand the data we were working with so that we could focus on the Excel skills… Great job!”
“This was really a great training. I really appreciated being able to work in the data as you were explaining. I hope we can schedule more time with you in the future.”
“I will never write a proposal even in the same way. Now back to writing my proposal with some visuals!”
“I have to say this was an AMAZING webinar. The webinar gave me tips to implement immediately and inspiration to how to change things over time (especially as I become more proficient in creating new charts).”
“I met Ann on Tuesday morning, and already I know that she is incredible. Her workshop for the PLE team at USIP on data visualization was one of the most informative seminars I’ve ever attended. I learned dozens practical skills in only a few hours with her, and I know that our team at USIP will be using her techniques on all our upcoming projects.”
“The Excel tutorials were (and will continue to be) fantastic. I love that you have a prepared workbook for attendees to practice with. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ structure is fantastic as well. Also, the links/resources you listed throughout the session were great.”
“Really enjoying your webinar today and my staff here are getting a lot of benefit from your sessions. I’ve been into this for a while but even I’m getting lots out of it. You are just so good at this and your energy is fantastic. Great pace and very natural.”
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