Petra Vallila-Buchman

Petra Vallila-Buchman is a Director at Ross Strategic with over 15 years of experience in evaluation, learning, and collaborative decision-making at the intersection of climate, ecosystems, and community health—with a particular focus on food systems transformation and collaborative network development. She brings a creative, systems-thinking approach to her work with foundations, government agencies, and coalitions—designing learning processes that surface early insights and translate complex stakeholder input into actionable strategies.

Petra excels at fostering trust across politically diverse groups and has a particular gift for raising timely findings that help clients learn and adapt even before an evaluation is complete. Her portfolio includes equity-centered evaluations for the Colorado Health Foundation and Kresge Foundation, strategic support for the Volgenau Climate Initiative, and nearly a decade of facilitating Washington’s Food Policy Forum, where she developed and implemented a tool to identify ways the Forum’s recommendations could be applied to support equitable outcomes and led consensus-building efforts on the impacts of climate change, land use, and food insecurity. She has extensive experience conducting qualitative research and enjoys knitting together diverse data sources to create cohesive narratives that drive forward momentum. As the mother of two young boys, Petra is driven by a deep commitment to leaving the world better than she found it—a value that infuses her belief that today’s most pressing challenges require interdisciplinary, intersectional, and multi-partner solutions. She holds a Master of Public Health from Emory University and is based in Seattle, Washington.