TEI’s mission is to help Tribal Home Visiting Program grantees gather and use information to improve the health and well-being of children and families in their community. We provide technical assistance in program evaluation, performance measurement, continuous quality improvement, and dissemination.
Our community-engaged approach builds capacity while honoring local and cultural strengths and practices. We support evaluation that combines cultural and scientific rigor.
TEI builds capacity through a mix of grantee specific guidance and universal support. We partner with diverse tribal communities to develop knowledge about home visiting in tribal communities and beyond.
The TEI Team
The Tribal Evaluation Institute is funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services. TEI3 was awarded to James Bell Associates, Inc., in partnership with Tellenger, Face to Face Integrated Technologies, and Michigan Public Health Institute.
TEI Team and Capacity Building Specialists
Brandie Buckless
Brandie is Bitterroot Salish from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation in Montana. She has been a TA Liaison since 2015. For over a decade, Brandie has worked on public health, evaluation, and community-based research projects with AIAN communities and organizations. She enjoys collaborating to build data use capacity in tribal communities and designing culturally relevant evaluations. Brandie has an MPH in community health promotion with a health disparities concentration from the University of Minnesota.
Erin Geary
Erin has served as a TA Liaison since 2013. He leads TA efforts with two grantees and oversees the Tribal Home Visiting Reporting System activities. Erin uses his evaluation and technical assistance expertise in his work with tribal child welfare and early childhood programs. He is passionate about supporting tribal decision making and services through community led evaluation. Erin has a masters in social work degree from University of Minnesota Duluth and a Ph.D. from University of Utah, where he focused on understanding AIAN well-being.
Kate Lyon
As the TEI Corporate Monitor for TEI, Kate draws on over 10 years of experience managing Federal contracts as well as extensive knowledge of the Tribal MIECHV program. Kate has worked with Tribal Home Visiting Program grantees since the beginning of the program in 2011 and served as TEI Project Director for 7 years. For the past 19 years Kate has collaborated with states, tribes, and community-based organizations to build evaluation capacity and conduct locally meaningful evaluation. Kate received her M.A. in applied anthropology from Northern Arizona University.
Julie Morales
As TEI Project Director, Julie leads the TEI team in all aspects of TA and has worked closely with many tribal grantees since joining the project in 2011. Julie has designed and supported the evaluation efforts of community, state, and tribal intervention programs since 1997. She is committed to promoting evaluation capacity through building strong relationships and applying practical research methods. She thrives on collaborating with tribal teams and evaluators to craft meaningful local evaluations. Julie has a Ph.D. in child psychology with a focus on applied developmental psychology from University of Minnesota.
Natalie Moyer
Natalie Moyer is of mixed European (Irish/Danish, Czech/German) and Indigenous descent from both present-day Nicaragua and present-day Massachusetts. Natalie holds a Master of Social Work degree from Washington University in St. Louis, where she focused her work on antiracism, policy, and Indigenous wellness. At the Brown School, Natalie had the opportunity to provide research and capacity-building support to both the National Indian Child Welfare Association and the National Native Children’s Trauma Center. Natalie joined TEI in September of 2021 as a Research Assistant providing logistical and administrative support to TEI staff.
Connie Park
Connie joined TEI as a TA Liaison in 2019 and works directly with five grantees. For the past 10 years, she has worked on multiple federal initiatives providing evaluation TA and training to tribal grantees. Her work has focused on strengthening evaluation design, data collection, and reporting for tribal systems of care, TANF, and child welfare programs. She enjoys learning about tribal programs and the innovative services available to AIAN children and families across the country and thrives off being able to help communities use data to tell their own unique story. Connie has a Ph.D. in community psychology from Wichita State University.
Erica Blue Roberts
Erica is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She serves as Deputy Director of TEI and works directly with four grantees. She is dedicated to promoting the use of culturally responsive evaluation in Indigenous communities in ways that include Indigenous ways of knowing and bi-directional learning. She enjoys learning from communities and helping them develop innovative evaluation designs grounded in their strengths and interests. Erica has a Ph.D. in behavioral and community health from University of Maryland and a masters of health science degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.