Dr. Sylvia Epps is the President at Decision Information Resources (DIR), a well-respected minority-owned and women-led full-service research and evaluation firm in Houston, Texas. With over two decades of leadership, Dr. Epps has played a pivotal role in advancing equity and justice through the application of data-driven research and evaluation.  Dr. Epps leads program evaluation teams for foundations (e.g., the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; Bloomberg Philanthropies, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, George Kiser Family Foundation) and for federal agencies (e.g., Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services), as well as other research firms, school districts, universities, and non-profits.  She is also a recipient of the Houston Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” and the Texas TRIO Association’s “2020 TRIO Achiever” and currently serves as an Affiliate Researcher for the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a member of the Board of Directors for Lupus Therapeutics.