Kayce provides strategic direction and leadership in the development and implementation of research, evaluation, the Strengthening Families Program, and Triple P (Positive Parenting Program). Before joining Children’s Trust, she worked in the field of sexual violence prevention for 10 years, developing, implementing, and evaluating primary prevention programs. She’s a licensed master social worker and a Certified Health Education Specialist.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at USC Aiken and master’s degrees in both social work and public health at the University of South Carolina.

I love the hopefulness of program evaluation because it allows us to see where there's been progress and where we can create a foundation for redirecting unsuccessful attempts at progress - failing forward. I also love the opportunity to make data understandable and relatable as well as to share it with others.

Atieno leads instrument development, data collection, analysis and the creation of evaluation plans and training manuals to evaluate the effectiveness of child abuse and neglect prevention programs and prevention training.

Her prior work experience includes researching sexual violence prevention programs, Train-the-Trainer (TOT) programs and TOT pretest-posttest question topics at Sexual Trauma Services of the Midlands (now Pathways to Healing). While there, Atieno also conducted statistical analysis and created a manual for said analysis for the pretest-posttest evaluation of the Youth Violence Prevention program.

Atieno holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in medicine, health, and society from Vanderbilt University and a master’s degree in health promotion, education, and behavior from the University of South Carolina.

She hails from Columbia, South Carolina.

Michelle assists with exporting and cleaning data, data analysis and conducting research to support the selection of evaluation measures.

She previously worked as a youth advocate for a nonprofit, where she guided youth and families to overcome challenges to heal and thrive in their communities by connecting the areas of academic support, job readiness and youth development.

Michelle has a bachelor’s degree in family science from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently enrolled at the University of South Carolina in a dual master’s program in social work and public health.

Michelle is originally from PG County, Maryland.

As an evaluation and research associate, Justin assists with improving and maintaining KIDS COUNT data and reports, data analysis, literature reviews, and other research activities to help support Children’s Trust’s evaluation and policy efforts. He also supports the development of web-based applications for monitoring and networking efficiency.

Before joining the Children’s Trust team, Justin was a data analyst for the Department of Health and Human Services in their Medicaid division, where he was responsible for consulting and reporting on data projects. He also has experience working as a statistician at the Department of Social Services, where he developed reports for internal use and consulted for data analysis on CQI projects.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in school psychology. Justin is from Lexington, South Carolina.

I design evaluations to foster data-driven decisions that enhance our work. I focus on evaluation processes and data quality improvement to better inform our programs and practices.

Leigh Robertson manages a range of evaluation activities across programs and initiatives. Her goal is to integrate her love of practical data and process improvement into the work Children’s Trust does to support its partners in prevention.

Her experience centers around enhancing services through a public health lens. Prior to joining Children’s Trust, she worked in various project implementation and evaluation roles in health services and nonprofit organizations.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in earth and environmental science at Furman University and a Master of Public Health degree at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health.