Nancy Mueller, MPH

Nancy Mueller is the assistant dean for planning and evaluation at the Brown School at Washington University. She is the founding director of the Brown School Evaluation Center focused on advancing evaluation science and practice through service provision, training and education, and evaluation research. Nancy is also responsible for the design and evaluation of the School’s strategic initiatives and overall performance management.

Nancy has over 20 years of experience in program and systems-level evaluation, strategic planning, and organizational leadership and performance management. She is a Leap of Reason Ambassador which is a community of leaders who believe that mission and performance are inextricably linked and advances this “performance matters” message using the Performance Imperative – a Framework for Social Service Excellence. She is committed to supporting non-profits on their journey to strengthening their performance and, in turn, their impact on the communities they serve.

During her tenure as the associate director of Washington University’s Institute for Public Health she was responsible for advancing the Institute’s strategic priorities and building capacity for public health education, research, and practice at the University.

Nancy co-founded the Center for Tobacco Policy Research and served as the associate director while at Saint Louis University and continued in this capacity when the Center moved to Washington University in 2008. During her ten-year tenure at the Center, Nancy led several large evaluation projects examining the effectiveness of public health interventions and policies in tobacco control and obesity prevention at the local, state and national levels. She has worked with numerous non-profit organizations in St. Louis and across Missouri to build evaluation capacity.

Her research career has focused on understanding public health systems and the ability of programs to sustain their efforts in dynamic climates. She was one of the developers of an innovative framework and tool to assess the sustainability of organizations and programs; the application of social network analysis as an evaluation approach to understanding public health systems; and the first school tobacco policy assessment tool to evaluate the comprehensiveness of school tobacco policies.

In 2007, Nancy became the founding board chair of Tobacco Free Missouri, the statewide coalition focused on reducing the burden of tobacco through policy change and education. As chair, she led the development of the Coalition’s infrastructure, enhanced and expanded partnerships with statewide organizations, and strengthened the grassroots network to support community tobacco policy efforts. Nancy holds a master’s of public health degree from the University of Texas-Houston.

Nancy loves to travel, laugh with her kids, and push herself out of her comfort zone.