Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hello, my name is Nicolas Uwitonze, and I am a second year PhD student in the Department of Agriculture Leadership and Community Education at Virginia Tech, USA. In my previous blog, I narrated my brief story in the field of evaluation and mentioned that my dissertation journey contributes towards becoming an evaluation consultant/entrepreneur. In this blog, I would like to talk a little expand on that conversation.
If you are excited to learn more about my research focus on “Evalpreneurship in Africa” or would like to engage in a discussion about “who is an ‘evalpreneur’ and how are evalpreneurs different to ‘evaluation consultant’, I hope that this blog is of great help!
Cool Tricks
1) What do we know about evaluation entrepreneurship?
The present CEO & principal of I2I, Dr Nina Sabarre first coined the term “Evalpreneurship” in her dissertation study that focused on the role of entrepreneurship in the evaluation marketplace in the U.S. As defined in her dissertation, Evaluation entrepreneurship or Evalpreneurship is a concept born out of the combination of two trans-disciplines “evaluation + entrepreneurship”
2) Who is an “evalpreneur” and how are evalpreneurs different to “evaluation consultant”?
As the definition of evalpreneurship suggests, evalpreneurs have the capacity beyond conducting and leading evaluations, including the willingness to operate a business and an emotional strength to take on risks. Simply put, evalpreneurs are owners/leaders of evaluation business(es).
Evaluation consultants and evalpreneurs have so much in common (for example, they both provide evaluation products and services), but also have differences in the payment and business structure as well as their level of commitment and unique characteristics like motivation, need for autonomy, and the initiative to take risks. Based on existing literature on evalpreneurship (e.g: Sabarre, 2021), I have summarized in the table below some of the cool tricks to help you determine if you are an evalpreneur, or evaluation consultant.
Hot Tips
About my research focus: “Evalpreneurship in Africa”
Building on Sabarre’s (2021) work, my research aims to explore how, if at all, evalpreneurship is (either explicitly or implicitly) present in Africa. I would like to study how Africa-based evaluators conduct their businesses, their identity (as evaluation consultants or evalpreneurs, or something else), document their characteristics, practices, and lived experiences (including stories, challenges, and opportunities).
Rad Resources
- Independent Consulting TIG Week: My Journey Towards Becoming an Evaluation Consultant/Entrepreneur: A Personal Story by Nicolas Uwitonze – AEA365
- Essentials of Evaluation Entrepreneurship with Nina Sabarre, Ph.D. – YouTube
- If you would like to contribute to my research, or are an Africa-based evaluation consultant or evalpreneur or would like to work in Africa; let’s get in touch on LinkedIn.
- If you happen to join AEA’s evaluation 23 conference in Indianapolis, you could join us for an engaged discussion on this. Come to the session entitled “Nurturing cultural practices of Black & African Evaluation Consultants” that will be chaired by Dr Mindelyn Anderson on Friday October 13, 2013.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.