Evaluation Management: How to Commission and Conduct Evaluations that Matter

About Anastasia (Tessie) Tzavaras CatsambasE. Jane Davidson

Anastasia (Tessie) Tzavaras Catsambas is the founder and CEO/CFO of EnCompass LLC an organization of 250 staff that provides services in evaluation learning leadership and organizational development. Ms. Catsambas brings 30 years experience in planning evaluation and organizational development. She has managed large-scale international evaluations delivered training in different aspects of evaluation and advocated for evaluation at global level. She is an instructor for the EnCompass Learning Center teaching appreciative evaluation evaluation management and gender transformative evaluation. Ms. Catsambas is an innovator and practitioner in appreciative evaluation a methodology that incorporates the systematic study of successful experiences in evaluation and has co-authored a book entitled Reframing Evaluation Through Appreciative Inquiry (Sage 2006). Ms. Catsambas is a Past-President of the American Evaluation Association. She was a founding member of the EvalPartners Coalition a global initiative to promote the use of evaluation to inform policy and program decisions and received the 2015 EvalPartners Award in recognition of her contributions. Ms. Catsambas holds a Bachelors degree in Economics and Political Science from the College of Wooster in Ohio and a Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard University. She has trained with the late Dr. W. Edwards Deming in Total Quality Management. She is fluent in French and Greek and speaks Spanish. E. Jane Davidson is an internationally recognized evaluation specialist best known for developing evaluation rubrics as a methodology for drawing conclusions about quality and value. She has also made significant contributions in the areas of causal inference for qualitative and mixed methods and in synthesis methodologies for evaluation.Dr. Davidson is sought after internationally as a speaker and workshop presenter for her signature approach of methodologically robust but refreshingly practical evaluation with breathtaking clarity. She has presented keynotes and invited workshops in the US Canada the UK Sweden Denmark Singapore Brazil South Africa Australia and New Zealand. She is former Associate Director of the internationally recognized Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University where she launched and directed the worlds first fully Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Evaluation. She was the 2019 recipient of the American Evaluation Associations prestigious Paul F. Lazarsfeld Evaluation Theory Award.