Ivonne Chand O'Neal
Ivonne Chand O’Neal Ph.D. is the Founder and Principal of MUSE Research, a creativity and arts research firm providing arts impact assessment, research design, and arts and culture evaluation services for multinational companies. She also currently serves as Senior Research Fellow for Creativity Testing Services, a creativity assessment firm examining creativity with such organizations as Red Bull, Lego, and Disney. Prior to her current position, Chand O’Neal served in a number of positions in the arts and culture sector including, Chief Research Strategist for Crayola, Director of Evaluation and Outcomes for VSA: The International Organization on Arts and Disability, and founding Director of Research and Evaluation for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts where she created the Center’s first comprehensive research agenda of over 25 research studies designed to examine the impact of the arts on society on local, national, and international scales. Her work has been featured by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Washington Post, EdWeek, and various news outlets. Her work in creativity research also led to her term as Associate Curator for the Museum of Creativity where she led in the development of exhibits and interactive experiences designed to make the public more creative. Chand O’Neal earned her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology with emphasis on creativity, arts integration, impact of the arts and culture sector on society, and program evaluation from Claremont Graduate University where she studied under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. She sits on the Board of Directors for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and the Editorial Boards of the Creativity Research Journal, and the Arts Education Journal. She also serves on the Research Advisory Board for the University of Pennsylvania’s Human Flourishing Initiative, the AP Research Development Committee for the College Board, and has worked actively with the entertainment industry (Disney Channel, NBC, TNBC) to increase creative thinking skills in educational television programs for children and teens.
Chand O’Neal’s recent focus has been on strategic impact assessment in arts equity and access with a number of national organizations including Crayola, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and as a federally-appointed expert consultant for the Institute of Educational Sciences and the Corporation for National and Community Service, addressing such issues as equity and access to resources for marginalized and vulnerable populations, how the arts and culture sector has addressed themes of racism, disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline, understanding how restorative arts impact youth populations touched by the federal prison system, the impact of mentorship programs on first generation college Latinx students, the impact of arts education on students impacted by the immigration crisis, and how mentorship programs impact vulnerable youth populations in terms of increased belonging, safety, and identify formation. She has published multiple books and is currently working on a book series entitled, The Arts and Human Flourishing: New Approaches for Measuring Impact, A 3-Volume Compendium, focusing on .Social Emotional Learning (Vol. 1), Marginalized and Vulnerable Populations (Vol. 2), and Creative Placemaking (Vol. 3) (in press, Springer).