Love this and LOVE Tricia Hersey – what a cool example (and important work)

Hi Joyce! I see that you are an EEF consultant practice partner – that is so awesome. We (my team at Oregon Community Foundation) are part of the first cohort of foundation practice partners, now shifting into “practitioner” (and figuring out what that means). I also see that – of course – you know Tom Kelly, who has been an incredible evaluation friend and mentor to me. I’m looking forward to learning more about your work!

Hi all! My name is Kim and I live in Milwaukie Oregon, just southeast of Portland, on Clackamas land with my husband and daughter, Hazel.

I’ve been in my almost full time job at Oregon Community Foundation as a Senior Research & Learning Officer for over nine years and have had a side gig via Leonard Research & Evaluation, LLC (the site needs work, I know!) on and off for over a decade when projects arise that make sense to squeeze into the margins.  That includes work in survey design, and specifically survey question development, often in partnership with Sheila B Robinson – my co-facilitator and co-author (Designing Quality Survey Questions was published by Sage in 2018, we’re just starting to work on a 2nd edition now). Sheila and I just launched our first self-hosted live online course this spring and have lots of ideas about how to build related offerings.

I’m starting to think about what a transition fully into Leonard Research & Evaluation (or a new, related independent thing of some kind?) could look like and creating a sort of runway toward change, starting with the survey design piece but hoping to also build out offerings related to equity-driven program evaluation. It’s a huge privilege to be exploring this with the (reluctant) support of my boss; the hardest part of this for me will be leaving the team I work with. But, I’m ready for change, excited about the possibilities and thrilled to be here with all this support and camaraderie.