Eva M. Witesman’s love of learning and love of her family is shown through her dedication to temporal and spiritual education. She has felt personally guided onto an educational path that has brought many blessings to her, her family, and her community.
After receiving her bachelor’s degree in university studies from the University of Utah in 2002, Witesman wanted to continue on to graduate school but was torn between her desires to further her education and to focus on motherhood. Following a prompting, she continued her education and received her MPA from Indiana University in 2004. After a hiatus—during which her husband, Owen, interned in Finland—she continued her education and received her PhD in public management and policy analysis in 2009, also at Indiana University.
Witesman, an expert in evidence-based innovation and strategy, has worked as an educational software designer and a self-employed nonprofit management consultant, focusing her efforts on public and nonprofit sectors. In 2009 she became an assistant professor of public management at the BYU Marriott School of Business.
Eva Witesman has authored or coauthored over twenty-four publications and presented more than forty lectures, workshops, and presentations. She has been awarded Teacher of the Year by the Master of Public Administration Association, the Chancellor’s Fellowship by Indiana University, and is a Stewart Grow Fellow of the Marriott School of Business. Witesman is also a member of many associations, including the American Evaluation Association, the Academy of Management, the American Society for Public Administration, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, and the Public Management Research Association.
As evidenced by her own list of accomplishments, Eva Witesman is a proponent of higher education, and in her BYU devotional address she encouraged women to pursue an education. She testified that God is preparing women to serve in capacities that require all the secular and spiritual knowledge they can acquire—including the capacity to provide for their families. Eva and Owen Witesman have four children, who, she says, are “individually and collectively the central joy of my life.”
