Our approach to facilitation and meaning-making includes the following core strategies:

Prompt Discussion

Invite Curiosity

Enact Solutions

towards a transformation that directly improves the experiences of Black, Indigenous and People Of Color (BIPOC) and other marginalized identities within organizations and their communities.

AAW Core Principles

  • We ground ourselves in the importance of a learning culture by embracing constructive feedback as it is essential to building inclusive environments.

  • We make space to dream, imagine and co-create spaces that are inclusive of the type of diversity of culture and experiences we want to see.

  • We embrace multiple narratives and intersectionality, avoiding tokenism, while recognizing and affirming everyone’s talents and contributions.

  • We aim to unlearn white supremacy characteristics (wsc) and shift to more restorative and holistic practices that promote justice and equity for all.

  • We honor the cultural wealth of BIPOC communities by respecting each person’s control over their own story and experience.

  • We hold an ethical responsibility to listen, grapple and respond to how our work impacts their well being.​​

  • As we center racial equity, we maintain attention to the liberation and inclusion of other systematically marginalized communities including the LGBTQIA+ community, immigrant and refugee communities, persons with disabilities, neurodivergent peoples, those from lower social-economic status, women, those of different religious experience and beyond.

Why center a CREE approach?

Culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE) is a holistic framework that integrates diversity, equity and inclusion at all stages. Unlike traditional approaches which may ignore them, CREE recognizes the importance of structural, cultural and contextual factors (e.g., historical, social, economic, racial, ethnic, gender) to evaluation. 
In embracing a participatory process that centers the individuals most impacted, this approach aims to conduct evaluation not simply for communities, but with them.

  • AAW seeks to reframe and repurpose the use of data to call out inequities and acknowledge progress on cultivating equitable and inclusive environments that can sustain the ongoing, active and complex journey of transformation that is necessary for racial justice.

  • AAW seeks to help organizations to unlearn static traditional approaches to data by using equitable evaluation principles to build trust and make quality improvements that benefit the communities being engaged.

  • Amani Austin (she/her), the founder of Austin Advocates With, is a culturally responsive evaluator and program development leader with a deep commitment to racial justice and continuous quality improvement. Amani has much experience in community-driven work with knowledge of multicultural education and access to opportunity. She has over a decade of experience working with youth and families of color within the nonprofit sector, engaging in direct service, curriculum design, leadership training, program evaluation, and research.


    In her lifetime, Amani has been a program participant, non-profit leader, youth advocate, racial equity facilitator, critical researcher, and program evaluator/consultant. Through the variety of these roles, she has gathered feedback through the stories and lived experiences of communities of color for most of her life. Amani is committed to the field of evaluation because she sees it as a tool for creating iterative cycles of feedback and inclusive learning cultures that can advance equity and racial justice within organizations. Amani holds a BA from California State University of Northridge in Urban Studies and Planning and an MPP from Portland State University in Policy Analysis, emphasizing Education and Racial Justice. She is a current board member of the Oregon Values and Belief Center.

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