March 31, 2026

Dear CEI partners,

We thank Dr. Hanh Cao Yu for her leadership and wish her well in her next chapter. We would like to introduce you to our new Interim CEO, Diana Breen.

Hanh decided to step down as the Executive Director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation at the end of March. The board of CEI—Phil Chung, Somjen Frazer, and I—are all grateful for Hanh’s leadership and stewardship during her tenure. She is leaving the organization in an even stronger position than she found it.

Thanks to her insights and the great work of the staff, we understand better than ever what it will take to ensure CEI plays an even more significant role in the philanthropy and evaluation ecosystems. We also understand that she, like Julia Coffman and Chera Reid before her, is charging us with ensuring we realize every bit of CEI’s potential and we are committed to doing so.

We have decided to take a moment before hiring the next long-term visionary leader and ensure that the organization is optimized to deliver the best programming and thought leadership it can. To do that means ensuring operations, systems, and culture are all aligned to deliver what is needed for this moment.

For this reason, we have decided to hire an Interim CEO to help us make this transition, whose primary mandate is to ensure that the organization is well placed to play a catalytic role in its next iteration with a permanent Executive Director. We are excited to share that we have selected Diana Breen as CEI’s Interim CEO. This is Diana’s ninth stint as an Interim CEO/Executive Director, and she brings an exceptional track record of 20+ years of management experience, winning seven-figure grants, strong finance and operations skills, and formal training and practice in DEIA efforts as well as executive coaching. She previously served as Executive Director of Ariva, a South Bronx-based economic empowerment non-profit where she now serves on the Board. We are extremely excited to have her join CEI.

We know that Deputy Director Anjie Rosga will continue to lead CEI’s great program team with strengths and purpose.

We believe we are well placed now to ensure that the organization is fit for purpose for our next hire. And we believe that this interim period, with strong engagement from the board, the strength of the staff, and your partnership, will only make us stronger. 

With gratitude for Hanh and the CEI staff,

Bess Rothenberg, Board Chair
Phil Chung, Board Member
Somjen Frazer, Board Member