9:00—9:30 AM
Virtual Breakfast and Networking Opportunity
Hosts: CES Ontario staff and Board members
9:30—9:45 AM
Conference Welcome
Presenters: TBA
10:30—11:30 AM
Presenters: Medha Aurora, Sophie Llewelyn, Emma McDonald, Katherine Slemon, and Mahmoud Rahim
11:30 AM—12:00 PM
Rapid Sessions Breakout Rooms
Presenters: Medha Aurora, Sophie Llewelyn, Emma McDonald, Katherine Slemon, and Mahmoud Rahim
1:00—2:00 PM
Presenters: Jennifer Connoly, Mary Ferguson, Vibhuti Mehra, Allison Prieur, and Daniela Schroter
2:00—2:30 PM
Online Networking
Hosts: CES Ontario staff and Board members
Medha Aurora is an emerging evaluator and project manager with extensive experience conducting program evaluations with nonprofits. She is passionate about initiatives that promote holistic youth development, gender equity and community well-being. Her trainingin economics, psychology, and education has equipped her with strong quantitative and qualitative research skills. Medha manages LogicalOutcomes’ new AI workspace for Ontario nonprofits. Her facilitation experience includes a workshop series on data equity for nonprofits and recent presentations of LogicalOutcomes’ AI evaluation planning tool (including a short presentation for the CES 2025 virtual conference).
Astrid Brousselle is a professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria. Her expertise relates to the approaches, theories and evaluative methods that she applies to the field of health and to planetary health. She holds a PhD in Public Health from the University of Montreal. Before joining the University of Victoria as the director of the school, she held a Canada Research Chair in Evaluation and Analysis of the Health System at the University of Sherbrooke (Prov. of Quebec).
Between 2015 and 2019, she was the French editor of The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation/Revue canadienne d’évaluation de programme and, for many years, she was a member of the editorial board of Evaluation and Program Planning. In recognition of her contribution to the development of evaluation methods, she received in 2013 the Prix Reconnaissance of the Société Québécoise d’Évaluation de Programme (2013). In 2017 she received the recognition Mention coup de coeur of the Jean-Pierre-Bélanger Prize from the Association pour la Santé Publique du Québec (ASPQ) for her public positions defending the public healthcare system.
Session: Expert Q&A
Jennifer Connolly, MSc, Co-Founder and Lead, Edge Health Insights. Jennifer is a health economist and data scientist who helps healthcare leaders and executives in Canada and the UK deliver actionable insights from data. She has over eight years of experience working across research, policy, and advisory contexts, leading projects ranging from large-scale national evaluations to hands-on support for small primary care organizations. Jennifer leads Edge Health’s Canadian portfolio. She holds an MSc in Health Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BSc in Chemistry and Statistics from Mount Allison University. Jennifer is a member of the Canadian Evaluation Society and has supported award-winning workin partnership with the NHS, winning two UK Health Service Journal (HSJ) awards in 2022. She has spoken about her work advancing data-driven healthcare at a variety of international conferences and is passionate about building evaluation capacity within the healthcare sector.
Mary Ferguson has been involved with hundreds of projects focused on social, environmental and economic development over the past 25 years, working as a principal of Eko Nomos since 1995 and founder of Sustainable Livelihoods Canada (SLC) in 2019. Throughout Canada, in northern, remote, rural, and urban communities Mary has brought her skills to bear on project of many sizes and with many different organizations. Mary has developed a specific group of strategies for application to development, research, and evaluation projects according to specific local needs.Founding SLC provides a legacy location for the processes, tools and contacts that Mary has developed over the course of her working life
Session: Masterclass Sessions: Sustainable Livelihoods Framework: A Strengths-based Approach to Evaluation
Sophie Llewelyn, MSc, is a Senior Evaluator and Director with LogicalOutcomes. She has 20 years’ experience with mixed-methods and participatory research, 6 years’ experience in evaluation systems design, expertise in data equity and Gender-based Analysis Plus, and a passion for storytelling through effective data visualization. Sophie led technical development of the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Outcomes Measurement Platform, and managed the platform from 2020-2024, providing evaluation coaching and capacity building services for scores of Ontario nonprofits. She currently leads LogicalOutcomes’ AI initiatives, including our new AI workspace for Ontario nonprofits. Her facilitation experience includes many workshops on evaluation planning for nonprofits, recent presentations of LogicalOutcomes’ AI evaluation planning tool (including a short presentation for the CES 2025 virtual conference), and co-teaching a course in program design and evaluation for the Faculty of Social and Community Services at Humber College (2020). Sophie is currently working on her CE application and hopes to become a Credentialled Evaluator by 2026.
Emma McDonald is an internal Evaluation Consultant at the Knowledge Institute on Child and Youth Mental Health and Addictions. She brings over eight years of experience in planning, implementing and evaluating diverse health and public health programs across Ontario,including initiatives in rural, remote, and underserved communities. She currently works to help child and youth mental health and addictions agencies measure, monitor and evaluate programming to ensure continuously improving, high-quality care. Emma is a Credentialed Evaluator with the Canadian Evaluation Society and holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Waterloo and a Professional Specialization Certificate in Population Health Data Analysis from the University of Victoria
Session: Rapid Sessions: Embedding Evaluation in Dynamic Processes
Vibhuti Mehra is a seasoned non-profit leader and community builder with expertise in strategic and sustainable organizational development. She has almost two decades of leadership experience with diverse national, regional, and local community-based non-profit organizations and social enterprises in Canada and the United States. Vibhuti is fuelled by seeing individuals, communities and organizations realize their full potential. She is passionate about applying SLC’s strengths-based approaches to help non-profit organizations address complex challenges. As an ardent advocate of collaborative leadership, Vibhuti feels at home at SLC where she gets to work in partnership with a talented, knowledgeable, and dynamic team of colleagues who model kindness, generosity and reciprocity. Vibhuti adopts intersectional feminist, anti-oppression, anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion principles to develop changemaking strategies supporting community health, belonging, and well-being. She is adept at shaping organizational systems and operational structures to support the successful implementation of innovative participant-centered programs and strategic organizational development goals.
Session: Masterclass Session: Sustainable Livelihoods Framework: A Strengths-based Approach to Evaluation
Ronit Novak is a Toronto-based creative director and strategist focused on the ethical and human-centred use of emerging technologies. As the founder of The Grain—a podcast, newsletter, and event series exploring the intersection of AI and creativity—she brings an interdisciplinary lens to how AI can be integrated thoughtfully across sectors, from media to policy and evaluation.
Session: Keynote: Between Speed and Substance: AI’s Place in Evaluation
Allison Prieur is a Credentialed Evaluator who has been working with non-profits in Canada for over 20 years. Her experience includes engagement, evaluation, and leadership roles at small to mid-sized organizations and experience with funding organizations including the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the Ontario Ministry of Health, and United Way/Centraide Windsor-Essex County. As a learning-focused evaluator, she actively works to build supportive relationships with staff and understand the unique challenges faced by each organization. She helps identify needs, design learning-centred strategies, evaluate success, adapt practices, and build relationships to amplify impact. She is certified in the Success Case Method and has recently completed a national evaluation project using the method. Allison is a lifelong learner. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Developmental Psychology and Social Work from the University of Windsor and a master’s in Public Policy from Simon Fraser University. She is completing an Interdisciplinary PhD in Evaluation at Western Michigan University focusing on organizational change leadership. She lives with her three young kids in Tecumseh, Ontario.
Dr. Daniela Schröter is an evaluation scholar who builds organizational evaluation capacity and supports organizations in achieving their objectives by providing practical, data-driven evaluation consulting. She is an associate professor at Western Michigan University’s School of Public Affairs and Administration, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses in program evaluation, research methods, grant writing, and social entrepreneurship. Daniela holds a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary evaluation and a master’s degree in intercultural business communications and German and American studies.She is a 2024 Presidential Innovation Professor at Western Michigan University. She is also a Lead Consultant and Evaluation Facilitator at the Brinkerhoff Evaluation Institute.Over the last 20 years, Daniela has worked with a wide range of private, public, and nonprofit organizations around the globe to build evaluation capacity, and design and implement useful and actionable evaluations. Her research focuses on evaluation theory and methodology in social and organizational contexts. Daniela is a German native who loves to travel the world with her daughter and take long walks with her mini dachshunds.
Kathleen Slemons is a lifelong learner with a passion for the nonprofit and charitable sector. She has worked in multiple program evaluation and program delivery roles, with particular expertise in the health and social services spaces.She is currently the Manager of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning at Community Foundations of Canada, where she was brought in to lead the internal evaluation and reporting of the Community Services Recovery Fund, a historic investment in the non-profit sector by the Government of Canada. In this role, she works with funders like the Government of Canada, external evaluation firms, and recipients reporting on their own impact. She has worked in a variety of evaluation roles, both as an internal and external evaluator, working within the social services and health sectors. She holds a Master of Artsin Applied Social Psychology from the University of Guelph.
Mahmoud Rahim is an Evaluation Officer with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and a Graduate Student in Evaluation at the University of Ottawa. Mahmoud currently sits of the Board of the Canadian Evaluation Society Educational Fund (CESEF) as the Vice-Chair of Social Media and formerly sat on the Board of the Canadian Evaluation Society-National Capital Chapter as Chair of Partnerships and Engagement from 2022-2025. Mahmoud is currently completing a Master of Education, Evaluation in Professional Contexts at the University of Ottawa. He holds a Graduate Diploma in Public Policy and Program Evaluation from Carleton University, a Certificate in Health Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University, a Master of Public Administration from Queen’s University, and bachelor’s degrees in political science and electrical engineering from UBC and the University of Calgary,respectively.
Session: Rapid Sessions: Navigating the Politicization of Evaluation in the Canadian Public Sector