Meet Audie
Audacity Nadler is a transgender anarchist with three children, two dogs, and over 20 years of experience in education, program development, evaluation, and supporting resilient human development from a systems perspective. They have an unwavering devotion to taking photos of sunsets. Someone really cool once said Audie's superhero name would be The Best Practice.
"I don't just evaluate Programs...I tell the truth."
Audie Nadler is the founder and lead evaluator of Authentic Evaluation. They specialize in creative, culturally responsive approaches that honor community voice and generate meaningful insights. With experience across nonprofits, public health agencies, community-based organizations, and philanthropic foundations, Audie brings a grounded, relational style to evaluation, one that prioritizes people, lived experience, and trust.
Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Audie partners with organizations locally and nationally to design evaluations that reflect community voice, lived experience, and values.
At the core of their work is a simple belief: Evaluation should support your mission, not burden it.
The Story Behind Authentic Evaluation
Authentic Evaluation was created from a refusal to separate values from practice.
Audie’s work is grounded in the belief that evaluation is never neutral. Every tool, question, and framework reflects assumptions about whose voices matter and which outcomes count as success. Too often, evaluation prioritizes compliance over truth, producing data that erases context and disconnects organizations from the realities of the people they serve.
Shaped by a lineage of radical empathy paired with action, Audie approaches evaluation as both a responsibility and an opportunity. Inspired by figures like Casper ten Boom, Rosa Parks, Dorothy Day, and Harriet Tubman, this work is rooted in the discipline of grounding decisions in values, especially when doing so is difficult.
Authentic Evaluation exists at the intersection of statistics and social justice. Through arts-based and culturally responsive methods, evaluation becomes a way to tell the truth about programs, the people they affect, and the systems they operate within. This approach creates data that is more accurate, more humane, and far more useful for learning, accountability, and change.
Professional Background and Expertise
Audie’s professional experience is grounded in real-world practice, community partnership, and systems-level thinking. Their work is shaped by years of experience in:
Public health evaluation
Nonprofit program assessment
Community-based research
Facilitation with diverse and multicultural groups
Implementation of creative and arts-based evaluation methods
Designing data systems that are practical and sustainable
They are trained in culturally responsive evaluation practices, qualitative and participatory methods, arts-based data collection, and communication strategies that make data easy to understand. Their strengths include deep listening, perspective-taking, and translating complex information into clear, actionable insights.
Audie’s background allows them to bridge the gap between what programs hope to achieve and what evaluation needs to measure, resulting in processes that function well in real-world settings.
What It’s Like to Work with Audie
Clients describe working with Audie as collaborative, grounding, and refreshingly human. They bring warmth and clarity to what can otherwise feel overwhelming or technical.
With Audie, evaluation becomes:
A conversation, not a transaction.
A process of discovery, not a checklist.
A tool for strengthening programs, not a burden on staff.
A way to honor community voice, not extract information.
Above all, Audie creates evaluation experiences that feel safe, engaging, and useful, helping organizations move from uncertainty to confidence in their impact.
What Guides Their Work
If you’re looking for evaluation that reflects your community, strengthens your mission, and creates meaningful insight, we’d love to talk.
Ready to connect?