Liz Sweitzer is an Evaluation Specialist with The Evaluation Center. Trained as a medical anthropologist, Liz has extensive experience working with community-driven health initiatives, working with vulnerable populations, and adapting research and evaluation to be culturally appropriate and salient in different contexts.  She is the lead evaluator for the Community Engagement programs under the NIH- funded Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, including their community-based participatory research projects centered on empowering underserved communities to have equal voice and control in the biomedical research that impacts them. She also leads the evaluation of the Peer Recovery Coach program under the State Opioid Response grant funded by SAMHSA. Liz has worked in or collaborated with partners in the Middle East, North Africa, Western Asia, and the U.S. Her passion lies in using participatory and qualitative methods to amplify the stories of program participants and community members and centering equity and social justice in her work.

Liz holds a Master of Arts in Medical Anthropology from the University of Colorado Denver and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Asheville North Carolina. Her previous research includes cultural impacts on biomedical acceptability amongst women, impacts of racial and geopolitical anxieties on performance mediums, and decision-making practices and governing structures within intentional communities. Her graduate work included program evaluation, data analysis for the American Pediatric Association, volunteering for the Harm Reduction Action Center of Denver, and serving as a Resource Specialist for United Way.

In her free time, Liz loves traveling, performance art, board games, and her parrot Dali.