Skill Sets
- Focus Groups, In-Depth Interviews, Cognitive and Usability Testing, Qualitative Analysis. Text or Content Analysis. Analysis of Open-ended Survey Responses.
- Community Leader and Facilitator Experienced with Community-Based Participatory (CBPR) Methods.
- Literature Reviews, Environmental Scans.
- Team and Project Management.
- Multilingual Studies, Translation Management and Evaluation.
- Proposal Writing, Proposal Management, Government Contracting.
Education
MA, Georgetown University, Language and Communication
BA, Johns Hopkins University, Psychology
Founding Narrative
Founder | The Community Stories and Conversation Project (TCSCP), Silver Spring, MD
Ms. Tesfaye founded a research consulting firm that also houses a network of independent researchers and research entrepreneurs.
Senior Study Director | Westat, Rockville, MD
Ms. Tesfaye led, moderated and analyzed focus groups for this multi-site Community Based Research Project (CBPR), project, planned and facilitated regular meetings with community members and leaders from one of three study sites and interviewed community members and leaders to create tailored messages regarding community-identified health concerns for reluctant groups of anti-vax individual on behalf of the CDC. She also led and contributed to a number of focus-group and cognitive interview studies to develop and evaluate health-related messaging campaigns, such as a multi-strategy, multi-year effort to improve medical device recall communications on behalf of the FDA. Ms. Tesfaye also contributed to literature reviews and environmental scans, including compiling resources on emerging Community-Initiated-Care (CIC) efforts on behalf of SAMHSA.
Lead Project Manager | Research Support Services, Evanston, IL
Ms. Tesfaye led a research team for a multi million-dollar, award-winning set of qualitative projects on behalf of CDC that led to a better understanding of under served people traditionally left out of critical HIV prevention and treatment services. She also led qualitative research projects on behalf of the U.S. Census Bureau to improve multilingual doorstep messaging and recruitment materials, assisted in recruiting hard-to-reach populations, and led and contributed to a number of other projects for corporate, academic, and federal clients. She managed studies, oversaw the recruitment of hard-to-reach populations, trained teams, conducted fieldwork, and moderated and analyzed focus groups, in-depth interviews, and cognitive interviews. In addition, Tesfaye worked as a translation coordinator. In this role, she helped train translation teams and manage translation, translation review, and translation evaluation projects using a modified committee approach and individual interview evaluations.
Lead Data Scientist | Nielson Company, Columbia, MD
Ms. Tesfaye planned and led the updates and development of over 100 printed recruitment and coaching materials in seven languages, including iterative research and development interviews, co-developing culturally appropriate designs, overhauling and managing translation and transcreation workflows, and printing and distribution. She led a series of focus groups regarding best practices for bilingual call center staff. Her other tasks included leading translation projects as a translation and localization subject matter expert and iterative testing and development of a panelist web portal.
Senior Technical Research Analyst, Project Manager, Survey Methodologist | Statistical Research Center, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD
Tesfaye managed core surveys, including the Education and Employment surveys and the Global Survey of Physicists, for which she coordinated closely with partners from over 100 countries and translation into seven languages.
Research Associate | Council on Foundations
Ms. Tesfaye worked on salary and benefits surveys for member foundations.
Research Assistant | Johns Hopkins Hospital
Ms. Tesfaye worked in the division of Medical Psychology, collaborating on a study of surgical interventions for Parkinson’s patients. She also collaborated on a meta-analysis of estrogen and cognitive function.
Professional Affiliations
Professional Affiliations
Founder, TCSCP (Talk Soup) Network
DC-AAPOR Councilor at Large
Subcommittee Chair, AAPOR Inclusion and Equity Committee
Member of AAPOR Qualpor (qualitative researchers), the Sensitive Topics Initiative, and Cross-Cultural and Multilingual Research Affinity Group
Member, AAPOR Task Force on Social Media in Public Opinion Research
Member, AAPOR Task Force on Mobile Technologies for Conducting, Augmenting and Potentially Replacing Surveys
Secretary/ Membership Chair, DC-AAPOR
The Community Stories and Conversation Project 