Susan Brutschy,

Susan Brutschy is the co-founder and President of Applied Survey Research. She is an experienced sociologist and has spearheaded the development and implementation of hundreds of social research projects over the course of her twenty-five year career. Since assuming the presidency of ASR in 1989, Ms. Brutschy has played an active part in the expansion of ASR services to include policy level research in a host of areas with a special emphasis on strategic activities resulting from data collection and analysis. Her recent accomplishments include the use of Results-Based Accountability (RBA) – pioneered by Mark Friedman of the Fiscal Policies Institute – to link program performance to community results and indicators. Over the last few years, she has lead several projects using RBA including the annual Santa Cruz County Community Assessment Project (CAP), a community “report card” with over 120 indicators; and the Santa Clara County Children’s Agenda, which is setting county-wide goals for children ages 0-18 based on data from the Santa Clara County Children’s Report. Other RBA activities include conference presentations on the subject at the 2007 Conference on Community Indicators in Jacksonville Florida, 2004 Community Indicators Conference in Reno, Nevada and two RBA salons about best practices. Among her other accomplishments, Ms. Brutschy has spearheaded the design and implementation of single and multi-agency evaluation studies serving vulnerable populations such as domestic violence victims, child witnesses of violence, youth in foster care, children at risk of not thriving, homeless or precariously-housed persons, low income or otherwise marginalized families and their children. Other notable projects include community needs assessment studies for various hospital consortia throughout California in order to help them comply with legislative requirements. Ms. Brutschy has had multiple speaking engagements throughout the nation regarding many of these projects. Ms. Brutschy graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with Highest Honors in Sociology, and was the recipient of undergraduate awards for her research in designing and implementing quantitative assessments of community opinion for the Social Research Unit.