Our company is headed by founder and president, Irene F. Goodman, Ed.D.
Under Dr. Goodman’s strong leadership, GRG has earned a reputation for its rigorous, high quality work and impeccable client service. GRG’s staff includes research associates, research assistants, and administrative personnel. Working individually and in teams, we combine knowledge and experience in education, psychology, science, history, technology, human development, sociology, and family studies. Each project at GRG is tackled by staff members who are best suited to the needs of the job. When appropriate, we provide additional expertise through our group of long-term senior consulting associates and through university faculty and experienced field researchers around the country. We also have regular student interns from local universities.
Brief biographical sketches of staff and consultants are provided below. By clicking on a staff person’s name or picture below you can access their email .
Irene F. Goodman, Ed.D., President Emerita, is the Founder and owner of GRG. For 35 years she was GRG’s President, part of her nearly 50 years of experience in research, teaching, and consulting. In 1989, as sole proprietor (dba Sierra Research Associates), she provided a variety of research, consulting, training, and product development services. Gradually, she began to specialize in the evaluation of a wide range of educational programs.
By 1995, her client base and the scope of the projects had grown significantly, prompting Dr. Goodman to incorporate the company as Goodman Research Group, Inc. and hire additional staff. While President, she had oversight responsibility for all GRG strategic planning and business development, project work, staff mentoring, and fiscal matters. In addition, she provided consultation on evaluation to clients and groups, and gave workshops and lectures on the subject.
Aside from leading various projects, Irene applied for and received a grant in 1996 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to conduct a needs assessment regarding university-based women in engineering programs. As a result of the findings from that preliminary study, she decided to apply to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a grant to conduct a full-scale research study that would evaluate 52 Women in Engineering programs across the country. The Sloan Foundation contributed funds for the study. The resulting ground-breaking longitudinal Women’s Experience in College Engineering (WECE) Project (1998-2002) received much attention, with several articles and conference presentations. (The report can be found here.)
Irene served as PI for the eight-year longitudinal evaluation of the National Cancer Institute’s Science Enrichment Program (SEP) (1998-2004), with Colleen F. Manning as co-PI. In addition, she served as the Principal Investigator (PI) for another of GRG’s own research projects, the Massachusetts Linking Experiences and Pathways (M- LEAP) Project (2010-2013), and followed by the MLEAP2 Follow-on Project (2013-2017), both funded by the NSF.
Her earliest professional experiences (following a B.A. in Psychology from UCLA and A Master’s in Child Development from Washington State University) were in the domain of childcare and early education. She was the director of the Tacoma Community College (TCC) childcare center in Tacoma, Washington in the mid- 1970s, and chaired a panel to develop an early childhood education curriculum at TCC. She then became an Assistant Professor of Child Development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and concurrently the statewide University Extension Child Development Specialist. She traveled extensively around the state, offering consultation and teaching to extension staff, other educators, and the general public, while maintaining her Madison campus faculty roles.
Irene earned a doctorate in Education, specializing in Human Development and Psychology, from Harvard University. While a doctoral student, she was an evaluation consultant to various local and national organizations and also taught courses at Dartmouth College and Tufts University as Visiting Lecturer. Prior to founding GRG, she had an extensive research consulting practice, designing and conducting evaluations, developing instructional materials, and carrying out regional training sessions on public policy issues. She also had stints as senior research associate at other organizations. Fortunately, having an extensive network of contacts – including very satisfied form clients during those various consulting stints and as an employee at R&D firms, made it possible for her to start what became a thriving business.
Now, she has scaled back her active involvement at GRG to several hours a week, with A focus on financial matters and consulting to the president. She is quite busy with her two wonderful grandchildren, Violet and Blaze, reading, traveling, volunteering, and is also a grandma to two dogs (a big surprise to those who knew Irene as ‘not a dog person.’)
Colleen F. Manning, Ph.D. assumed the role of GRG President in October 2023. In 1993, Colleen answered an ad from then Sierra Research Associates (soon to be Goodman Research Group) for a field researcher and GRG has been her professional home ever since. For 30 years, she has worked closely alongside Irene, first as a mentee and then as a partner in growing and shaping the business into what it is today.
In her new role, Colleen will balance strategic vision, client engagement, business development, and operational leadership to drive the firm’s success and impact. She also looks forward to seeing that cherished GRG traditions, such as annual pumpkin carving parties and designing clever holiday cards, continue. She will continue to work closely with select clients. She takes special interest in evaluating complex, multi-site portfolios as well as programs seeking to further their commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Clients appreciate her deep thought partnership and creativity and GRG staff members value her problem-solving skills and “grace-under-pressure” personality.
Colleen holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from UMass-Boston, an M.A. in Child Study from Tufts University, and a B.A. in Psychology from Mount Holyoke College. She was a 2010 Early Care and Education Research Scholar, a federally-funded award by Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which supports high-quality dissertation research with the capacity to inform child care programs, policies, and practices. When she’s off the clock, you can find Colleen hiking with her husband and beloved pup, Dodger, out listening to live music (or hosting concerts in her home), and playing all the NYT games.
Karen C. Gareis
, Ph.D., Director of Research and Professional Development, joined GRG in April of 2009. As Director of Research, she ensures the quality and rigor of GRG’s research and keeps abreast of state-of-the-art research methodologies and statistical techniques. As Director of Professional Development, she shares professional development materials in these and other areas with staff, including on the GRG PD blog.
Karen leads or co-leads evaluations of a variety of formal and informal educational programs for children and adults, including projects funded by NSF, NIH, NOAA, IMLS, and NASA. Examples include the “broadening participation” component of SPLICE, a multi-university collaboration focused on cybersecurity and privacy in smart homes funded by a $5.5M Frontiers grant from NSF’s SaTC program; the Space Telescope Science Institute public outreach and engagement activities about the James Webb, Hubble, and (upcoming) Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopes; and the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare’s Healing Healthcare Initiative, a pilot program providing education and support to hospital senior leadership teams to reimagine ways to better support healthcare worker well-being.
Karen has also conducted studies in a variety of areas, including social support, work-family issues, program evaluation, and gender. Before joining GRG, she spent 12 years at Brandeis University’s Community, Families, and Work Program conducting research on work-family issues. She also spent 5 years as an adjunct lecturer at Boston University teaching Introductory Psychology and Social Psychology. She received her doctorate and M.A. in Social Psychology from Boston University’s graduate program in Human Development and a B.S. in Psychology with minors in Linguistics and Anthropology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karen has obsessive interests in travel, cats, learning, cheese, making stuff, and colors (especially turquoise).
Anne Marie Amello, 
Finance Manager, has been a GRG staff member since 1998. She provides financial coordination and budget monitoring for all of GRG’s projects, and assists Dr. Goodman with all aspects of fiscal management. Before coming to GRG, Ms. Amello was on the staff of the Office of Professional and Continuing Studies at Tufts University for seven years, promoted from junior staff assistant to administrative assistant. She also worked at Malden Hospital and, before that, at the First National Bank of Boston. She graduated from Bunker Hill Community College in the Human Services Program.
GRG Consulting Associates
Janet M. Smith, Ph.D., who operates as Edscape Consulting LLC in Arlington MA, is serving as an evaluation consultant to GRG on several projects of NASA’s Universe of Learning program. Her consulting practice bridges evaluation and research, focusing on equity in education, particularly in programs related to the sciences. Additionally, she has evaluated bilingual teacher training programs in Haiti, and academic and STEAM innovation programs for urban youth.
She has conducted internal evaluation at The Steppingstone Foundation, Boston University School of Public Health and Salish & Kootenai (tribal) College. She has also carried out external evaluation for Boston Public Schools, The Possible Project, EXPLO, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, US Department of Education, and the Ministry of Education in the United Arab Republic. Janet was also a staff researcher at TERC, Cambridge MA, contributing to research and publications on the experiences of women of color in STEM education and careers and science assessments for bilingual middle-school students.
Her doctorate was earned at Boston College in Curriculum and Instruction, Teacher Education, and Special Education. Her dissertation was on immigrant Latino parents’ perspective of parent engagement, for which she won an award from the Northeast Educational Research Organization for outstanding graduate research. She also holds a Master’s degree in Professional Studies in Communication from Cornell University, and a B.A. in Fine Arts and French Language from Holy Cross College. She is fluent in Spanish, as a result of Peace Corps service in Central America. She holds dual citizenship from the U.S. and Ireland.
Robert T. Brennan, Ed.D., has provided support in quantitative research methods, from study design to statistical analysis, to GRG since 1993. He has considerable experience in advanced statistical techniques, including hierarchical linear modeling, item-response theory, logistic regression, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling. He was the project statistical methodologist for GRG’s NCI SEP project and has consulted on numerous other GRG projects, including the WECE study of women enrolled in engineering. He brought his vast experience in studying CPR training to several projects that GRG conducted for the American Heart Association, American Red Cross, and the National Safety Council.
He has authored and co-authored over 50 scholarly articles on topics in social psychology, education, medicine and public health. He currently holds an appointment in the Department of Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and has taught courses in hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), research design, measurement, data collection, and program evaluation at Harvard, at both the schools of Education and Government. He holds an A.B. from Amherst College, an M.A. from Middlebury College, and a master’s and a doctorate degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Education.