I’ve spent my career working with organisations and communities to use research and evaluation in ways that genuinely make a difference. Early on, I saw that good programs don’t succeed by accident — they depend on clear thinking, careful design, and a willingness to learn from evidence.

Over time, working across universities, non-profits, research institutes, and health services, I became increasingly intrigued by the value evaluation can bring to program success — and by how often that value is missed. I saw strong evaluation efforts generate useful evidence, yet fail to influence decisions because assumptions remained implicit, findings were not interpreted in context, or opportunities for learning were overlooked.

That experience shaped the focus of my work today. I now support organisations at points where direction matters: helping make the structure and assumptions underpinning an initiative explicit, designing evaluation that speaks to real decisions, and providing independent, evidence-informed judgement when the path forward is uncertain.