Mary Gordon is a Center Director at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE). A PIRE employee since 1992, she has worked on a number of public safety and health-related projects. Ms. Gordon is currently the Principal Investigator (PI) of the ACT NOW evaluation project. ACT NOW is a project designed to elicit inclusive and diverse engagement on key issues with both law enforcement and community input, with the goal of reimagining policing, public safety, and community well-being. ACT NOW has pilot projects in 14 sites that represent a broad diversity of rural, urban, and tribal communities.
Ms. Gordon was also the PI for the 21st Century Policing Cross-Site Multi-Stakeholder SER Project—a research-based project designed to increase our knowledge and understanding of Sentinel Event Review (SER) models in multi-stakeholder environments—and she was the Director of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP’s) Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center (UDETC)—a project PIRE administered for 16 years. The UDETC staff had a combined 50 years of law enforcement experience and more than 30 years of program management, training, technical assistance, and evaluation experience. In her functional role as a Director, Ms. Gordon managed a $3 million budget and collaborated with over 30 law enforcement and judicial consultants. UDETC provided over 200 trainings to law enforcement and developed 31 evidence-based and best practice documents that offered tools and operational guidance to law enforcement personnel.
Ms. Gordon has more than 30 years of professional experience in program administration, training, technical assistance, strategic planning, and data collection. Ms. Gordon has experience managing complex projects and developing diverse technical assistance materials and resources, and has exercised this skill working with health professionals, substance abuse professionals, and diverse and mainstream populations, to improve public health outcomes.
Selected Projects
21st Century Policing: Cross-Site, Multi-Stakeholder Sentinel Event Review Project
Measurement & Evaluation: Global Smart Drinking Goals (GSDG) Initiative
PIRE’s Center for Health, Justice, and Equity (CHJE)
Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center (UDETC)
Selected Publications
Paschall, M. J., Miller, T. R., Grube, J. W., Fisher, D. A., Ringwalt, C. L., Kaner, E., Lilliott, E., Watson, S., & Gordon, M. (2021). Compliance with a law to reduce alcoholic beverage sales and service in Zacatecas, Mexico. International Journal of Drug Policy, 97, 103352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103352
Friend, K. B., Gordon, M., Scarbrough, B., Collins, D., Fritz, K., Smoot, S., Copple, J., Copple, C., & Joyce, N. (2020). Sentinel event reviews in the criminal justice system: A review of the literature. Criminal Justice Studies, 33(4), 337-353. https://doi.org/10.1080/1478601x.2020.1741227
Miller, T. R., Ringwalt, C. L., Grube, J. W., Paschall, M. J., Fisher, D. A., & Gordon, M. V. (2019). Design and outcome measures for the AB InBev Global Smart Drinking Goals Evaluation. Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications, 16, 100458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conctc.2019.100458
