Anna Cruz is the Strategic Learning and Evaluation Officer at The Kresge Foundation. She supports the foundation’s Learning and Evaluation practice and works with internal program and practice teams to develop evaluative approaches for their work.

Prior to joining the foundation, she served as a research and evaluation consultant for close to a decade, working with foundations and other social-sector clients to evaluate the impact of their efforts and develop strategic community change efforts. Anna is a cultural anthropologist by training and has extensive experience conducting qualitative research and evaluation with ethnographic and participatory approaches. She has focused her career on designing and implementing research methods that are culturally appropriate for diverse and underserved and marginalized populations.

She started her career providing direct legal services to low-income communities at the Public Law Center in Orange County California.

A native of Southern California, she earned a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology from Vanguard University of Southern California and a master’s degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Oregon.