What I am, and care about

I am a South African evaluation and transformation specialist. My work connects evaluation, development, systems transformation, strategic foresight and living systems, exploring how communities and societies can better navigate and shape — in practice — the profound social, ecological and institutional shifts we need in an era of global turbulence, mind-engineering and AI dependence.

I am also a scientist with a PhD in Ecological Chemistry, but now mostly work with social and systems sciences. It is impossible to work in the field of ecology without understanding the interconnectedness of nature and our shared future on this planet; it was easy to translate this way of being into social contexts.

I am rooted in Africa. My forefathers came from France and Scotland to South Africa more than 300 years ago. I cannot be anything but African, and my African friends and colleagues confirm this as long as I respect their ways of being, and care sincerely and deeply about our country and continent.

I have a special focus on Asia too. With my husband I visited China for the first time in 1992, and I try to go back there every year. I lived in Japan for six months, and in Taiwan region for nearly a year before China opened to white South Africans after apartheid ended. I have worked in Bhutan, Myanmar, Vietnam and many others, and frequently in India. I love the continent. This is where the future will be determined.

I am a citizen of the Global South as well as a Global Citizen who has travelled widely, learning from other cultures in my own country and beyond. I draw on experience on the ground in more than 40 countries, from villages to national boardrooms. I also work at transnational and global level. All this makes it easy for me to span sector, geographic, disciplinary, generational, philosophical and ideological boundaries.

I care deeply: about justice, about living in harmony with nature, about all lives being of equal value. I strive to bridge cultures and knowledge systems, and to understand and blend diverse perspectives and ideologies. This is necessary, as I work and advise across the world on the design and evaluation of portfolios, strategies, institutions and collaborations aimed at everything from incremental reforms to urgently needed systemic transformations.

I therefore explore and work in practice with how, why, for whom, under what conditions, and with what tradeoffs efforts at change work, particularly in this polycrisis-turning-metacrisis-turning-permacrisis era. I reject traditional notions of development which assumes the superiority of one group of nations above others, as if they are beacons for us all. Instead, I am keenly interested in transformative development in the Global South and Global North, where organizations, groups or societies shift trajectory not through a single intervention, but through the accumulated choices, reforms and disruptions that alter what is possible in the future of nations and our planet.

I work on the ground with what 'success' and 'impact' really means in different contexts and with different societal values and knowledge systems. I experience and understand every day more about why so many well-intentioned efforts fall short. This is the real strength of evaluation in practice; we engage in depth with the 'insides' of ongoing efforts to do better, to get positive impact, to transform.

I also continuously track global shifts, trends and risks, and move easily between the macro and micro. I care about trajectories more than static snapshots, and always have the bigger picture in mind.

To do all this I draw on many disciplines and fields: evaluative thinking and practice, 'living systems' and complexity sciences, societal philosophies, futures thinking, and even some aspects of physical sciences, biomimicry and neurobiology.

I track AI developments fervently, recognising that it will change everything.

I therefore use AI where it adds value, but the thinking is (still) all mine!

Snapshots from my bio

I am a generalist evaluator, with experience in more than 40 areas as diverse as climate change, conservation, intercultural/interreligious dialogue, child labour, entrepreneurship, policy influence, and institutional research strategy and excellence. I have visited around 90 and have on-the-ground experience in more than 40 countries.

I have served in advisory capacities for many organisations, including the World Conservation Union (IUCN), UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), CGIAR system, Blue Marble Evaluation, Mastercard Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and more. Most recently I serve as South African member on the five-person High-Level Evaluation Advisory Committee of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB).

As a South African, I focus on the Global South and especially on my continents — Africa and Asia — where among others I helped initiate what is today known as 'Made in Africa Evaluation' (MAE), the African Women in Science Empowerment Model (AWSEM), as well as the Research Quality Plus (RQ+) framework and assessment instrument for development research.

I have held leadership positions including as President of the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA), and Vice-President of the global associations IOCE and IDEAS. I initiated the South African M&E Association (SAMEA), was the first American Evaluation Association (AEA) Board Member living outside North America, and first Council Chair of the International Evaluation Academy (IEAc), where I am now a Scientific Leader. I was a Steward in the SDG Transformations Forum, in Bounce Beyond and in Financing Ecosystems for Systemic Transformation (FEST).

I have taught modules at universities on four continents, served in editorial advisory positions for four international journals, and held visiting and honorary professorships in Japan and South Africa. I am a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, and was a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS) some years ago.

Before turning to evaluation, I was Director of Research at the University of Pretoria, responsible for all research and international affairs at the university, and later a grants portfolio manager at a South African national science council, where I focused on institutional research capacity development in 13 (at the time known as 'historically black') universities, urban and rural development, agrifood systems and biotechnology. This scientific foundation still shapes how I think about capacities and capabilities, about knowledge and evidence.

I am currently based in Geneva, Switzerland — a great country in many respects, but South Africa will always remain home.