Workforce & Social Impact Strategy
Employment programs that work, and the evidence to prove it.
I help workforce boards, nonprofits, and foundations design employment and education programs and the evaluation systems behind them, with more than a decade of experience serving Latino and immigrant jobseekers.
Formerly Mathematica·Duke MPP·Bilingual (Spanish)
Employment programs get funded on good intentions and run on thin infrastructure. The money arrives before the systems do.
I build the backbone underneath the work — designing the program, standing up the operational and grant infrastructure it needs, and putting evaluation in place from day one. So what you report is real, defensible, and fundable again next year.
ServicesThree ways I help organizations build programs that last.
Program & Grant Infrastructure
Design new employment and education programs and stand up the operational systems that grants require. From program model to reporting structure, built to satisfy funders and actually run on the ground.
Evaluation & Learning
Evaluation frameworks, focus groups, and human-centered design sessions that turn participant and stakeholder input into program decisions. Know what is working, what is not, and why.
Community & Stakeholder Engagement
Bilingual facilitation and engagement with the people programs are meant to serve. Bring the community into the room so the program is built with them, not just for them.
I come from research, not just program management. That changes how I work.
- Evidence first
- A decade at Mathematica taught me to build programs you can measure. Evaluation is not a report at the end, it is part of the design.
- Built with the community
- Focus groups and human-centered design put the people a program serves at the center of how it gets built.
- Strategy, not staffing
- I work at the directorial level: designing the model, the infrastructure, and the systems, so your team can run it well.
- Bilingual by default
- Fluent Spanish means engaging Latino and immigrant communities directly, without a layer in between.
Employ Milwaukee
Workforce development · Biomedical engineering sector grant
For Employ Milwaukee, I am building the infrastructure behind an employment grant in biomedical engineering: the systems, structure, and reporting that turn grant funding into a program that runs and delivers. It is exactly the kind of backbone sector-specific workforce programs need and rarely get.
Scope of work
- Program design
- Operational infrastructure
- Grant administration
- Evaluation & reporting
Veronica Murphy Sotelo · Principal
Good programs are built with the people they serve, and proven with real evidence.
Veronica Murphy Sotelo has spent more than a decade designing and evaluating workforce and education programs for the communities that need them most. As a Senior Analyst at Mathematica, she led research and evaluation projects for major foundations, government agencies, and community organizations across the country.
She holds a Master of Public Policy from Duke University, is fluent in Spanish, and has built her career around one conviction: that good programs are built with the people they serve and proven with real evidence.
Let's talk about what it would take to make it work.
Whether you're building a new employment program or rethinking one that isn't delivering, tell me where things stand. I read every message and reply within two business days.
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