Our Staff

Cynthia is a graduate of the University of Kansas City School of Law and Washington University George Warren Brown School of Social Work with a Masters in Social and Economic Development. Her varied career includes legal services, program administration, system reform, program and organizational design, project coordination, grant writing, training program management, and the management of multi-disciplinary work teams.  Cynthia has over a decade of teaching experience in social services at the master’s level in qualitative and quantitative research design, policy and advocacy as an adjunct with the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare and the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Social Work. She has led community development and consultation services to improve the quality of lives of vulnerable populations.

Kim has over 30 years of experience carrying out program evaluation and research work.  Dr. Murphy received her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1997 with a concentration on research design and statistical analysis, and has gone on to conduct program evaluations and research studies in the law enforcement, specialty court, mental health, domestic violence, child welfare, early education, K-12 education, and public health fields.  She has worked with clients representing for- and not-for-profit programs at the local, state, and federal levels (e.g., local: Success by 6; state: KIDS COUNT, the privatization of child welfare services in Kansas; federal: two demonstration projects funded by the Department of Health and Human Services — one on Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facilities for youth, another on a multi-state Quality Improvement Center for Child Protective Services, for which she was the co-director).   Currently, Dr. Murphy heads up the evaluation work for law enforcement’s Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program in Kansas City, MO and four of the Kansas City Municipal Court’s specialty courts, and assists with other RDI projects as needed.

Ms. Twillman holds a master‘s degree in social work from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a master’s degree in teaching from the University of Chicago. She has fifteen years’ experience in social services including teaching master’s level qualitative and quantitative research design and program evaluation in the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Social Work. Ms. Twillman has evaluated projects funded at the federal (DHHS-NCRR, DHHS-HRSA, DHHS AoA, and ONDCP-HHS-SAMHSA-DFC), state (Missouri DMH SPF-SIG from CSAP, Missouri DESE 21st CCLC, and Kansas DE 21st CCLC), and local (Health Care Foundation of Kansas City funding of the Lafayette County Brighter Futures consortium and the Jackson County Safe Family Coalition) levels. Her projects in the Kansas City area have included identifying and assessing local social service needs including the City of Lee’s Summit Social Services Needs Assessment and the Jackson County Community Mental Health Fund-Young Adults Roundtable Transitioning Youth Assessment (through which a needs assessment/ environmental scan was used to obtain SAMHSA funding for a 5-year DMH project to improve the Kansas City area system of care for young adults in transition).

Annalese provides support. Ms. Zawodny-Benlon has experience helping academic researchers develop grant proposals, as well as evaluating projects for the grantors. Before her graduate work in research, she worked in direct mental health and substance abuse services. In this capacity she presented in Family Drug Court. Ms. Zawodny-Benlon also provides quantitative data support through her work with RDI on the Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) in Jackson County, Missouri. She reviews, collects and enters data from Kansas City, Independence, Grandview, Blue Springs, Oak Grove and Sugar Creek police departments, as well as, information from community mental health centers.  Through the CIT project, Ms. Zawodny-Benlon gained knowledge of the interactions between Law Enforcement and Mental Health providers in the Kansas City region. She has worked with Mental Health Court data from case managers and on recidivism. The intersection of mental health, law enforcement and the court systems has given her a holistic perspective on the effects of mental health issues in the community. She assisted RDI with the ReDiscover KC-ATC project evaluation. She helped prepare a manual for the Kansas City Library “Money Matters” program to help others implement and evaluate this financial education program. Ms. Zawodny-Benlon collaborates with staff in program evaluation of 21^st Century Community Learning Centers. These diverse programs provide educational support for underrepresented and/or economically disadvantaged schools and before-school, after-school, summer and weekend programming.

Amanda has worked in nonprofit operations for more than ten years in a variety of roles: event planner, fundraiser, program planner, board member, data manager, evaluator, bookkeeper, office manager, HR specialist, and more.  In 2013 she earned a Master of Science in Nonprofit Management at Eastern University in Philadelphia, PA.  Amanda has worked as a Project Consultant with RDI since 2016, concentrating most of her efforts on an evaluation of Jackson County’s County Backed Anti-Drug Tax (COMBAT) programs, meeting with violence and drug misuse agencies all over Jackson County and working with COMBAT staff to understand the program’s impact.  In addition to her work with RDI, Amanda contracts on special projects with a variety of nonprofit agencies and small businesses