In this chapter, I share insights derived from my long and convoluted journey as an evaluation practitioner and as a capacity-building evaluation facilitator committed to demystifying evaluation as a core development resource. I weave in some foundational stories that have shaped and informed my path. Through my work and praxis, I have been striving to walk the convoluted pathways toward being and becoming a culturally competent evaluator and evaluation facilitator. The focus has been on dynamic flows rather than a particular destination status, on a lifelong process rather than a position or product. These dimensions of my journey have often not been conscious, intentional, or deliberately mapped out, but instead more implicit and intuitively guided by a passion and respect for authentic inclusion and responsive engagement.I highlight examples of one practitioner's efforts to give life to this resolve and put wheels under that vision of provocative possibility. Moving the agenda forward involves cultivating evaluative thinking and reflective practice by spotlighting its intrinsic value, relevance, and utility-most notably, through underscoring the intimate interconnections among excellence in program design, implementation, and ongoing improvement. Rather than an alien, externally imposed activity primarily driven by accountability compliance concerns (prove), sustainable engagement in the evaluation process dwells in its inform (knowledge creation) and improve 96 IN SEARCH OF CULTURAL COMPETENCE IN EVALUATION (ongoing development towards excellence) dimensions. Cultivating the will, as well as the skills, fuels my crusade: the energizing search for ways to pump up commitment through framing the evaluation process as congruent with the natural rhythms of one's work processes and practices.In working these processes from the inside out, I strive to ramp up the "pull power" of perceived value and relevance rather than the "push power" of external mandates and fear. My commitment to enhancing the will and the pull power has demanded constant refinement in my capacities to recognize and authentically engage diversity in its many manifestations-diverse persons, groups, perspectives, positions, organizations, and institutions. Through this work, the intimate interconnections between excellence and diversity have come to reside at the center of my life path.Diversity, in its many dimensions and manifestations, is increasingly acknowledged as a necessary prerequisite for excellence. It remains fundamental for discerning and attaining today's as well as tomorrow's best-our best future. Why? For many reasons, but especially because diversity fires up and fuels creativity, innovation, and generative engagement in all sectors of life and living. For example, higher education, like many other social institutions, is being challenged on many fronts to transform its teaching, learning, and working environments so that they are not only multiculturally diverse in appearance but also authentically inclusive and responsive in the...

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Twenty-first century evaluators face an imperative to recognize their privileged role in navigating socially complex terrain in ways that are ethical, demonstrate sensitivity to local and global social inequities, and reflect awareness of contested views of reality. Social justice and equity are increasingly viewed as a foundation of practice, necessitating that evaluators learn how to address potential power imbalances occurring within evaluations, the larger contexts in which those evaluations occur, and the emerging profession itself. This chapter addresses how the 2018 American Evaluation Association (AEA) Evaluator Competencies may help evaluators direct explicit attention to issues of power, privilege, and equity. We discuss how these competencies can aid evaluators in honing their practice to support evaluation' s role in attaining social justice. We also spotlight some programmatic exemplars that offer insights and resources for this work.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a historical framing for the development of the American Evaluation Association' s (AEA' s) Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI) program as an outgrowth of the AEA' s Building Diversity Initiative (BDI). This chapter provides historical documentation of the AEA' s BDI and the origins of the GEDI program and discusses how this represents an important part of AEA' s history.We discuss the circumstances that led up to the decision to begin the BDI, the organizational dynamics of bringing about the changes that BDI and GEDI stimulated in AEA and the evaluation profession, and the implications of this process for AEA' s evolution as a culturally responsive organization.