Kate Nichols is a monitoring and evaluation practitioner with eight years of involvement in the evaluation, social research and market research fields, and has worked in the agriculture and natural resource management sectors for the past six years. Specialising in the evaluation of large and complex natural resource programs and agricultural research and extension, Kate is currently completing a MSc in Assessment and Evaluation, and has an Honors Degree in Geography.

Before working at Clear Horizon Kate worked for three years with the Evaluation Support Team, Victorian Department of Primary Industries (DPI). In this role, Kate designed and implemented monitoring and evaluation frameworks for a range of large scale agricultural research, development and extension programs, including the award-winning Greenhouse and Climate Change Victoria program. These frameworks were designed to contribute to evaluation capability building in DPI, and employed a range evaluation techniques to encourage staff participation in all aspects of evaluation. Kate’s contributions were enhanced through a short-term contract to the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office in 2003 where she worked on a statewide performance audit of fire prevention.

During her time at DPI, Kate also led research into the evaluation of science capability including experimentation with the Most Significant Change technique and concept mapping. This research grew into a collaborative research project between DPI and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Vietnam. In 2004, Kate obtained support from AusAID to work in Vietnam on this research. Further details of Kate’s work are available here.

Since coming on board at Clear Horizon, Kate has enjoyed the opportunity to share her expertise and interest in evaluation capability building, the design and implementation of monitoring and evaluation frameworks, as well as participatory methodologies.