Whalen is the director of evaluation and research services at the Alliance. Whalen assisted the American Association of Children’s Residential Centers (AACRC) with replication of their widely-used 1999 outcomes study.

Whalen brings a passion for making research and evaluation accessible to the nonprofit human services sector. Her goal is to facilitate nonprofit sector access to the power of knowledge generation through collaborative research and capacity building. Whalen brings more than 25 years of experience in evaluation and research in public and private human services settings and higher education. She gained experience with residential treatment programs while completing a three-year, federally-funded adoption opportunities project done on behalf of the State of Michigan by the School of Social Work at Michigan State University.