Our Clients

Sensemaking Lab partners with mission-driven institutions to turn complex data into clear, actionable insight. A selection of our recent work:

Community College of Philadelphia — Center for Male Engagement

Sensemaking Lab served as the external evaluator for the Center for Male Engagement (CME), a program supporting the enrollment, persistence, and success of African American male students, funded through a U.S. Department of Education Predominantly Black Institutions grant. Using surveys, interviews, structured observations, and de-identified institutional and program records, we assessed program implementation, retention, academic achievement, and the supports most effective for participants, and delivered biannual reports with findings and recommendations grounded in best practices.

UCLA School of Education & Information Studies — Admissions & Funding Data Infrastructure

Sensemaking Lab designed and built the first phase of a data infrastructure to strengthen the department’s admissions and funding decisions. The project consolidated historical admissions records and integrated them with UCLA’s multi-year financial aid tool to forecast PhD cohort sizes, funding allocations, and multi-year budgets. We delivered interactive dashboards, evaluated options ranging from automated Excel and Tableau workflows to a cloud-based Databricks lakehouse with predictive modeling, and provided training and documentation, establishing a foundation for future curricular and alumni data integration.

Improve Your Tomorrow, Inc.

Sensemaking Lab partnered with Improve Your Tomorrow (IYT), a nonprofit advancing college access and completion for young men of color, to lead the Learning phase of its strategic planning process. Our work combined an internal assessment of prior initiatives and organizational barriers, a landscape analysis of trends affecting college access for young men of color, and stakeholder engagement through focus groups and surveys. Guided by an equity-first framework and a collaborative, iterative process, we synthesized the findings into a report to inform IYT’s long-term strategy.