Our Leadership

Kate Williams-Whitley

President & CEO, EIG Insights

Kate Williams-Whitley is the President and CEO of EIG Insights, a research and consulting firm she co-founded in 2023 to help nonprofits measure and communicate their impact more effectively. She has served organizations across the spectrum of size, industry, and mission such as: Compassion International, Excellence in Giving, USAID, Kiva.org, and many others. Her leadership experience ranges from teaching irrigation to local pastors on a rural farm in Malawi to running a global measurement team with dozens of staff and multi-million dollar budgets. Her expertise lies in causation-based impact evaluations, underpinned by a deep commitment to mixed methods approaches that capture the complexity and nuance of nonprofit work.

Kate’s academic credentials reflect her dedication to the intersection of data, development, and mission-driven work. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Data Science from Harvard University, Executive Education Training in Impact Evaluations from MIT, a Master’s in International and Development Economics from the University of San Francisco, and a Bachelors in Non-Profit Management from the University of Pittsburgh. She has taught and published about measurement, applied research, spiritual development, and program design.

Having traveled and worked in over 40 countries, Kate brings a global perspective to her work. She resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and two sons, and enjoys engaging with the arts.

Kristen Check

Vice President, EIG Insights

Kristen brings over 10 years of experience in the international development non-profit sector including designing and supporting monitoring & evaluation for multi-million-dollar development projects funded by World Bank, UNICEF, Pentair Foundation, among others; executing training programs, hosting webinars and podcasts, facilitating community networks, and advising numerous organizations on their monitoring & evaluation strategies in order to help clients ‘measure what matters’ so that they fulfill their mission and vision.

After a number of years working in the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) sector as an evaluation specialist, Kristen realized there was a need for skilled monitoring & evaluation professionals who could serve a wide variety of organizations and who also understood the importance of spirituality and faith in poverty alleviation. It was then that she founded her own boutique consulting firm, Edessa Research.

While operating Edessa, Kristen also led the Qualitative Research team at Compassion International, and has been pivotal in building Compassion’s capacity for qualitative research, knowledge management, and utilization of feedback data and constituent voice in program strategy.

Kristen has carried out monitoring, evaluation, and research work in a number of different countries across multiple sectors. To date she has worked with organizations providing safe water in Honduras, educating children and youth in Tanzania, rescuing victims of human trafficking in India, and sharing the gospel in South Sudan, to name a few.  

Kristen holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Cultural Anthropology, and a Graduate Certificate in Public Health from the London School of Tropical Medicine.

Kristen resides on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, USVI with her husband and two sons. She enjoys any activity in and on the water.

Our Team