Marika Sandrelli

In 1980, Marika Sandrelli embarked on a project overseas in Brazil, which inspired her nearly 40 years of experience working within community-based, regional, provincial and national programs and services. Most of her work has been with the most socially excluded people, including those struggling with poverty, housing, mental health, trauma and substance use issues.

Specific roles have included outreach to street-involved citizens in Toronto and Vancouver, clinical coordination in a residential substance-use treatment centre in Fraser Health, executive direction of a community-based AIDS service in Kamloops, and contracted provincial and regional strategic planning in B.C., Alberta and Ontario. Marika has also been involved in program planning, monitoring and evaluation in a variety of diverse settings, from individual programs within non-profit organizations to multiple system-level contexts with over 5,000 stakeholders and partners.

She works with leaders in the evaluation field, including the developmental evaluation founder, Michael Quinn Patton, and the outcome mapping founder, Terry Smutylo. Currently, and for the last 16 years, Marika has worked as the knowledge exchange leader for Mental Health and Substance Use Services in Fraser Health, where she engages in utilization-focused evaluation to generate knowledge to improve services and support.

Marika is an advisor for the Evaluation for Social Change and Transformational Learning Certificate program.