Program Staff

Susan Brutschy, President    --   email
Susan Brutschy is the co-founder and President of Applied Survey Research. She is an experienced sociologist and has spearheaded the development and implementation of hundreds of social research projects over the course of her twenty-five year career. Since assuming the presidency of ASR in 1989, Ms. Brutschy has played an active part in the expansion of ASR services to include policy level research in a host of areas with a special emphasis on strategic activities resulting from data collection and analysis. Her recent accomplishments include the use of results-based accountability (RBA) pioneered by Mark Friedman of the Fiscal Policies Institute to link program performance to community results and indicators. Over the last few years, she has lead several projects using results-based accountability including the yearly Santa Cruz County Community Assessment Project (CAP) which functions as a community report card with over 120 indicators, the First 5 Redesign of school readiness in Watsonville, California for children ages 0-5 in low income communities of color, and the Santa Clara County Children's Agenda, which is setting county-wide goals for children ages 0-18 based on data from the Santa Clara County Children's Report. Other RBA activities include conference presentations on the subject at the 2004 Community Indicators Conference in Reno, Nevada and two RBA salons about best practices. Other accomplishments include community needs assessment studies for various hospital consortia throughout the state to meet legislative requirements as well as the design and implementation of single and multi-agency evaluation studies. Ms. Brutschy graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with Highest Honors in Sociology, and was the recipient of undergraduate awards for her research in designing and implementing quantitative assessments of community opinion for the Social Research Unit.

Peter Connery, Vice President    --   email
Mr. Connery is Vice-President and CFO of Applied Survey Research. He is an experienced sociologist and active member of his community. He is responsible for ASR infrastructure requirements such as facilities, technology acquisition, networking, strategic partnerships and management of the general ledger. He is also an active social researcher with particular expertise in homeless research, farm worker housing and health issues and housing related research. Mr. Connery has a background in the business sector as well. He worked in the logistics services industry for over 18 years holding director level management positions in business units ranging from operations to sales and marketing. His project management expertise from the business sector coupled with his academic background in social research has enabled ASR to expand significantly. Mr. Connery is active in youth sports as a coach of basketball, baseball and soccer and is currently President of Aptos Little League. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with Honors and holds professional certificates from numerous logistics service groups.

Kelly Pleskunas, Director of Community Research    --   email
Ms. Pleskunas has been with the firm for eleven years as Project Director, and as such is responsible for the quality control of all ASR projects and deliverables, including the coordination of staff and other resources. Her efforts are central to the organization, evaluation, community surveying, secondary data collection, analysis, and presentation of findings for each ASR project. Ms. Pleskunas has performed as the team leader for ASR community assessment projects in Anchorage (AK), Coconino County (AZ), Lake, Marin, Nevada, San Luis Obispo, Napa and Solano, and San Joaquin counties, and for the Santa Cruz County Community Assessment Project for United Way of Santa Cruz County, which is now in the twelfth year. She has also been a key team member in a number of regional collaborations that include health, public safety, education, economic, social, and natural environment analysis. Ms. Pleskunas has applied her expertise to homeless survey and census projects, and in assisting our hospital clients in compliance with Senate Bill 697, which is their "serving the underserved" mandate.

Prior to her tenure at ASR, Ms. Pleskunas applied her organizational and business management skills to the gerontology and health care fields.

Lisa Colvig-Amir, MA, Director of Evaluation Research -- email
Before joining ASR, Ms. Colvig-Amir worked for four years in Indonesia as a technical advisor for PLAN International, an international, child-focused community development organization. At ASR, Ms. Colvig-Amir's specialty is in creating and applying a variety of conceptual constructs, such as logic models, root cause analyses, stakeholder analyses, and gap analyses to help clients articulate their needs and the most strategic steps to evaluate and plan for more effective interventions. Ms. Colvig-Amir also is committed to having evaluations and assessments be as participatory as possible, helping clients develop their own "measuring stick" to chart progress to what they define as success. She has managed or co-managed the Catholic Charities evaluation, Foundation Consortium evaluation, Marin County Child Care Commission strategic planning, Capacity Assessment for the Children and Families First Commission of Los Angeles County, Evaluation Technical Assistance and Training (ETAT) for battered women's shelters, the School Readiness Assessment Project in San Mateo County, and evaluation of the Greenbook Project's efforts to create more effective interventions for the co-occurrence of domestic violence and child abuse. She sits on the board of Welfare & Low Income Support Network, Inc. (WeLISN), a local welfare-rights advocacy group. Ms. Colvig-Amir has her Master's degree from Stanford University in Evaluation. She received her Bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz with honors in Cultural Anthropology and South East Asian Studies, with an additional focus in Economic Development.

Angelina Aguirre, MPA, Senior Research Analyst    --   email
Angelina Aguirre is a native to the Bay Area and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley where she studied immigration and public policy and interned at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, which provides free assistance to refugees applying for political asylum. She received a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University in 2002 and is a graduate of Leadership Gilroy, a nine-month leadership development program administered by Gilroy's Chamber of Commerce. Ms. Aguirre has experience in philanthropy, social and economic research, and child advocacy. In 2007, she was recognized as Gilroy's City Woman of the Year for establishing the Latino Family Fund of Gilroy, a family-based giving circle that builds bridges between Latinos and the broader philanthropic sector, and for her board service with M.A.C.S.A., a non-profit social services agency that serves Santa Clara County. She will be working on multiple community assessments and evaluation projects.

Katie Albee, Research Analyst    --   email
Ms. Albee graduated with her Masters of Science in Applied Economics and Finance from the University of California Santa Cruz. She has research and analysis experience in the areas of social and environmental public policy and has worked extensively with SAS and Excel during her graduate studies. Ms. Albee has also studied International Economics and Business at the Maastricht School of Business, Netherlands for a year. In addition, she has worked in finance and after sales marketing at Carrier Transicold (a division of United Technologies) in Cergy, France.

Vanessa N. Haug, MS, Senior Research Analyst    --   email
Before joining ASR, Ms. Haug worked on a state-funded project to evaluate the effectiveness of the nation's preeminent Juvenile Domestic and Family Violence Court in Santa Clara County. Since joining ASR, Ms. Haug has worked on several projects, including program evaluations and needs assessments of youths in the child welfare system and of families facing domestic violence. Ms. Haug is also a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for children in the foster care system. Ms. Haug completed her Master's degree with honors in Criminal Justice Administration from San Jose State University. In her spare time, Ms. Haug enjoys playing the piano, cooking, and Capoeira (Brazilian martial art).

Tracy Keenan, MSW, PPSC, Senior Research Analyst    --   email
Ms. Keenan is a city of Salinas native who went to UC Berkeley as an undergraduate to major in psychology. There she worked as a research assistant for three psychology professors, researching topics ranging from parenting styles, to indicators of a successful lawyer, to business psychology. Ms. Keenan has a Master’s in Social Work degree from San Jose State University where she graduated with distinction and received the award for excellence in research for her Master’s thesis. Her thesis was a program evaluation of a bullying prevention program that she implemented at Alisal Union School District in Salinas. In graduate school, Ms. Keenan interned as a therapist at Catholic Charities of the Monterey Diocese, and then as a school social worker in Salinas. Before going to graduate school, Ms. Keenan worked as a counselor in a group home in Monterey. Through these experiences, Ms. Keenan developed a love for direct service, especially working with youth, yet decided that working in research could provide her with the ability to affect evidenced-based change in the community.

Kristi Kelly, Ph.D., Project Manager    --   email
With a PhD in Social Psychology, Ms. Kelly has a strong background in health-related research, having worked on theory-based approaches to problems such as smoking, weight control, and STD prevention. She previously managed two NIH-funded clinical trials in which she helped to develop and evaluate behavioral interventions designed to improve asthma management. As a project manager for a survey research company, she gained experience working with diverse clients in academia, government, and the private sector, implementing and directing research projects in the areas of public health, early childhood education, substance abuse, energy conservation, and market research. Ms. Kelly has worked with a wide range of participant populations (including youth, the elderly, substance abusers, low-income, and hard-to-reach groups), and she has strong methodological, data analytic, and report-writing skills. She currently works on the San Mateo Safety Net and Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs assessments, the Greenbook project, and the San Mateo County and Santa Clara County school readiness assessments. In her spare time, Ms. Kelly participates in the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team In Training (TNT) program as part of the marathon training team. In her 2+ years with TNT, she has completed 4 marathons and has personally raised almost $10,000 for blood cancer research.

Holly Maclure, Senior Research Analyst    --   email
Ms. Maclure is responsible for providing data analysis, project support, and production services to ASR. Ms. Maclure has been involved in several community projects, including: First 5 Santa Cruz County Evaluation Program, Homeless Census and Survey projects for the counties of Los Angeles, Mendocino, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz; and the Santa Cruz Community Assessment Project (CAP). Prior to joining ASR, Ms. Maclure managed the production of technical documentation as a Publications Engineer at Borland Software Corporation, and conducted research studies in stereotyping and discrimination in the University of Massachusetts Psychology Department. A transplant from the land of Red Sox, Ms. Maclure loves the surfing and motorcycling opportunities that California provides. Ms. Maclure graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology.

Hope Malcom Maltz, Senior Research Analyst    --   email
Ms. Malcom-Maltz has a strong background in data analysis and presentation, having worked privately in database development and as a spatial data analyst specializing in geographic information systems (GIS) with the federal government. Her recent projects with ASR include: assisting in the large-scale evaluation of the First 5 Santa Cruz County ("Prop 10") grant programs, working under a Packard grant with the Santa Cruz County law enforcement agencies to identify child witnesses when investigating domestic violence cases, providing data analysis and database assistance to the Food Bank of Monterey County, and preparing maps for the Santa Cruz County Child Care Council and the City of Capitola. Privately, Ms. Malcom-Maltz is an avid practitioner of Aikido, the Japanese martial art of peace and recently began an ongoing class for children ages 4-5. Ms. Malcom-Maltz has a Master's degree in Biology from the State University of New York in Syracuse, New York.

Lynne Mobilio, Ph.D., Director of Research   --  email
Prior to joining ASR, Ms. Mobilio co-founded Lewis / Mobilio Research. For more than five years she created and implemented innovative (and actionable!) market research programs for a broad range of clients, including Amazon.com, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, Allied Domecq, and 1-800-Flowers. Ms. Mobilio's academic work focuses on domestic violence, coping with trauma, and cognitive strategies to enhance well-being. She enjoys all aspects of research - from idea generation, to executing both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, to creative data analysis, to writing and presenting results. Ms. Mobilio has also focused on the marketing of social issues; in order to better understand how to catalyze action in a target audience, Ms. Mobilio co-developed the Awareness to ActionTM model. Informed by several disciplines, this model details how to move individuals along the continuum from becoming aware of a social issue, to holding supportive attitudes, through trial and adoption. In her spare time, Ms. Mobilio is an avid reader, travels whenever she gets the chance, and glories in running after her two toddlers. She holds a Ph.D. from University of Minnesota in social psychology.

Mónica Morales, MPA, Research Analyst  --  email
Ms. Morales was raised in Watsonville and graduated from UCSC in 2002 with a B.A. in Sociology. She is a recent graduate of Columbia University in New York where she received her Masters in Public Policy and Administration. She has worked in a number of local organizations such as the Santa Cruz Aids Project, Triangle Speakers, and the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County. 2006 is the 10-year anniversary of Ms. Morales receiving the United Way Community Hero Award for her community organizing with Latino youth in Watsonville. She will be working with the First 5 Santa Cruz County evaluation program, Safe Schools Project, and multiple Community Assessment Projects.

Kristin Ozawa, Research Analyst  --  email
Ms. Ozawa graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara. There she focused her undergraduate studies on the cognitive and social development of young children. After moving back to the Bay Area, Ms. Ozawa began her career as a teacher for two-year-olds at a NAEYC accredited learning center where a few years later she made a shift into research. She assists on multiple projects and applies her foundation and knowledge of early education to ASR evaluations and assessments such as First 5 San Mateo County School Readiness Initiative.

Javier Salcedo, Research Analyst -- email
Mr. Salcedo has 15 years of experience establishing research methods and designing studies involving all facets of research, including measuring the effectiveness of marketing strategies and tactics to drive decisions into successful business results. Mr. Salcedo is an experienced user of SPSS software in marketing, social, psychological and education research. He is also accomplished using automated capture software, such as Teleform Elite, for survey tabulation. Before joining ASR, Mr. Salcedo coordinated and managed quantitative and qualitative studies in Latin America and the Caribbean islands for the packaged goods industry. He has also conducted more than 200 consumer focus groups acting as moderator. Mr. Salcedo has taught Psychometry (the study of psychological measurement tools), Edumetry (the study of educational measurement tools such as the GRE), statistics, methodology, experimental design, multivariate analysis, SPSS software, consumer behavior, marketing, and marketing research at five national universities in Bogotá and Cali, Colombia. Mr. Salcedo's marketing research perspective stems from that of an independent consultant and from the perspective of a corporate researcher for large-sized companies. Mr. Salcedo has a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and a Master's degree in Marketing from Los Andes University in Bogotá, Colombia, and certificates in Marketing, and Training and Human Resources Development at the University of California, Santa Cruz Extension. He is fluent in both English and Spanish.

Abigail Robideaux Stevens, MA, Project Manager  --  email
With over 7 years experience at Applied Survey Research, Ms. Stevens has performed state and federal project management, survey design, focus group facilitation, primary and secondary data collection, and data management. Ms. Stevens is currently the project lead for the Santa Cruz County Community United to Reduce Bingeing (CURB) project and the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) / Pajaro Valley Prevention and Student Assistance Safe Schools / Healthy Students Project. For CURB, Ms. Stevens coordinated a survey of over 400 Santa Cruz County youth ages 16-20 and a telephone survey of 400 Santa Cruz County residents. For Safe Schools / Healthy Students, Ms. Stevens is coordinating the federal evaluation of this multi-tiered project including a telephone survey of 400 PVUSD parents and over 100 students. For the Lucile Packard Foundation's kidsdata.org website, Ms. Stevens was responsible for managing data collection for over 185 secondary data tables. Ms. Stevens' special focus is youth asset building and working on ways to increase self-esteem and improve outcomes for youth. Ms. Stevens was the project manager for the Capitola Housing Needs Assessment, Catholic Charities Mental Health Program Evaluation, Region V Healthy Start evaluation, PVUSD Voter Survey, Packard Youth After School evaluation, the Truancy Project and the Domestic Violence Response Team evaluation. Ms. Stevens received her Masters of Arts in Education with an emphasis in Counseling and Student Services from San Jose State University and is in the process of applying for her Pupil Personal Services Credential. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Whittier College.

Falguni Vora, MA, Research Analyst  --  email
Ms. Vora comes to ASR with extensive grassroots experience promoting women's economic development, child mental health and prevention of domestic violence in India and the U.S. Her interest in applied research and community change was ignited by an impact assessment that she conducted for an economic development program for women in slum communities of Mumbai. The study identified gaps in service delivery and was instrumental in improving program efficiency. Equipped with a Master's degree in Social Work and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Ms. Vora also has private sector experience in software development and automation technology. A trained Indian classical dancer, she has represented India at a Youth Folk Dance Festival in Italy and has won several dance competitions. She is an alumna of the Coro Community Leadership Program and actively volunteers with Maitri, a domestic violence organization in the South Bay.

Deanna Zachary, MA, Project Manager   --   email
Ms. Zachary came to ASR after working in politics for several members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives and the Minnesota State Legislature. She also worked as a freelance producer for KQED radio's Forum show in San Francisco. At ASR, she has coordinated the San Mateo County Children's Report 2005, the Strategic Plan for the Early Childhood Education/ Child Development Department of the San Mateo County Community College District, the Evaluation of Canada College's Early Childhood Education/ Child Development Program, the San Mateo County Kickoff to Kindergarten Longitudinal Study, the San Mateo County School Readiness Assessment, Raising A Reader in San Francisco, and the USDA Food Stamp Outreach Project. She contributed to the Bay Area Report: A Regional Report for Nine Bay Area Counties and the City of Capitola Housing Needs Assessment. She also manages the media activities at ASR. Locally, Ms. Zachary hosts Talk of the Bay on KUSP radio, the NPR affiliate for the Central Coast, where she is also Vice-President of the Board of Directors. She has a Master's degree in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego and a Bachelor's degree in Politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.