Past CESBC Conferences
Recent conference themes and programs are shared here to give guidance and inspiration for future presenters.
2025 CESBC Conference | Vancouver
Conference Theme
Evaluation isn't a linear process — it's a dynamic and evolving journey, shaped by continuous learning and reflection. Unfolding the Evaluation Journey invites us to approach evaluation as a path filled with opportunities to learn, adapt, and deepen our understanding of the practice and its impact.
Keynote Speaker
Stitching Together the Stories That Shape Our Evaluation Practice
Dr. Gladys Rowe (MSW) explores how our evaluation journeys are stitched together from moments of learning and unlearning, guided by the relationships and responsibilities we hold. She invites evaluators to reflect on where we come from, what we are accountable to, and the futures we are helping to shape through our work.
Together, we will consider how re-centering story can transform evaluation into a relational practice of trust, care, and possibility. Gladys is the host of Indigenous Insights: An Evaluation Podcast – where she sits in conversation with Indigenous leaders across Turtle Island and beyond.
Conference Program
Discover the full CESBC 2025 program featuring the full day schedule, session details, speaker highlights, and venue information.
2024 CESBC Conference | Vancouver
Conference Theme
Participants examined how we can evolve our evaluation practice to grow together and better support the individuals and communities we work with, as well as create a more sustainable future. We build on previous experience and learnings while also exploring new technology, tools, and areas of focus. The 2024 conference theme was explored through three streams:
Emerging Trends in Evaluation: Exploring Together to Improve Our Work
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA): Building Our Skills and Integrating Learnings Into Practice
Evaluation Coffee Talk and Story Exchange: Sharing Stories From Our Work
Keynote Speaker
Embodying Principles: Growing Transparency, Inclusivity and Reciprocity in Evaluation
As evaluators seeking to thrive in the evolving world of responsible AI, sustainable engagement options, and equitable spaces, we can gain clarity by leaning into our principles. Process evaluation and reflexive practice invite us to review how principles for shared growth and success — transparency, inclusivity, and reciprocity —are embodied in the tools we use, the procedures we assess and apply, and the ways we create space and engage in community. This keynote is a call for evaluators to reflect on and embody the principles that matter in our world and to embed them into our evaluations.
Carolyn Hoessler, PhD, CE, is a national award-winning leader who consults with professional associations, post-secondary institutions and initiatives for reconciliation in education. Navigating complex systems to achieve change, Carolyn facilitates integrative and engaging decision making and co-created adaptive approaches to strategic change. As an educator, multi-methodologist, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s School of Environment and Sustainability, Carolyn’s engaging workshops, guides, and graduate courses have furthered practice in statistics, qualitative methods, outcome-based design, rapport-building, shifting power, and creating space for more voices. With principle-embodied processes, Carolyn guides sense-making for emergent trends such as artificial intelligence, pivoting online and back again, and embedding inclusivity.
Conference Program
Discover the full CESBC 2024 program featuring the full day schedule, session details, speaker highlights, and venue information.
2023 CESBC Conference | Vancouver
Conference Theme
This year’s conference is about Weaving Our Story. The themes tie together who we are, why we do what we do, and how we do it. We invite participants to reflect on our past and history with evaluation, bringing forward our learnings into the present day, and continuing a path of co-creating best evaluation practices and a thriving evaluation community. We encourage ambitious thought around innovations and forward-thinking evaluation that can help us advance our practice alongside the next generation of new and emerging evaluators. The three streams help us break down and tackle some of these questions and reflections:
Evaluation Stories, Learning from our Past
Co-creating Evaluation, Engagement in our Present
Innovative Evaluation, Reimagining our Future
We know that everyone is excited to meet their old friends and colleagues, and also to make new acquaintances and spark new connections. We encourage all early, emerging, and part-time evaluators to join in the workshop discussions, post-presentation Q&As and hallway chats, bring in their new ideas, and broaden the conversations.
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Chandria D. Jones is a trailblazing force in the world of research and evaluation, passionately championing culturally responsive and equitable evaluation. With a unique blend of expertise as a mixed methods researcher, Chandria is at the forefront of driving meaningful change in the realms of systems transformation, social justice, and health equity.
At the heart of her work lies a commitment to amplifying the voices of historically marginalized populations, including people from racial and ethnic minorities groups, youth and families with lower-incomes, and individuals navigating mental health and substance use challenges. Chandria infuses her evaluation with a lens of racial equity, diversity, and inclusion. She is a firm believer that authentic progress can only be achieved through a genuine commitment to community engagement and participatory methods.
Dr. Jones is also celebrated as the editor of the book, Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation: Visions and Voices of Emerging Scholars. This seminal work not only spotlights her profound dedication to the cause but also celebrates emerging scholars from historically marginalized backgrounds, enriching the landscape of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation.
Conference Program
Discover the full CESBC 2023 program featuring the full day schedule, session details, speaker highlights, and venue information.
2022 CESBC Conference | Vancouver
Conference Theme
This year’s conference is about Access and Empowerment. Presenters will be engaging us in evaluation stories and methods that explore questions such as:
How do we increase the reach and impact of evaluation?
Who has access to evaluation, and how do we empower more people to utilize evaluation in their work?
How can organizations use data to collaborate effectively, internally and externally?
How do we use strategies and methods that involve stakeholders and collaborators who have been systematically excluded?
We know that everyone is excited to meet their old friends and colleagues, and also to make new acquaintances and spark new connections. We encourage all early, emerging, and part-time evaluators to join in the workshop discussions, post-presentation Q&As and hallway chats, bring in their new ideas, and broaden the conversations.
Keynote Speaker
Marissa Hill is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, born and raised in Georgian Bay on the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and within the historic Georgian Bay Metis Community, on pre-confederation treaty 5 and 16 territory. She is currently the Director, Operations and Strategy at Health Commons Solutions Lab. innovation lab in partnership with community, partners, and innovators. Marissa is committed to engaging in these activities through co-creation and using Indigenous methodologies that centre First Nation, Inuit, and Métis Worldviews, Values, Principles, and Protocols.
She is the lead author of the Inquiry and Learning Bundle and the Indigenous Knowledges and Data Governance Protocol that were co-created in partnership with First Nation, Inuit, and Métis Elders, Knowledge Keepers, community members, and ecosystem partners and is the co-author of the Canadian Science and Policy Magazine article, Cultural Safety: The Criticality of Indigenous Knowledges and Data. Marissa’s expertise and passion is rooted in Indigenous data sovereignty, including intellectual property, and she enjoys sharing her learnings around decolonized research, evaluation, impact measurement, and performance measurement across Turtle Island – including on the stages of SOCAP, the Canadian Evaluation Society, the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development, the Million Lives Club, and the Canadian Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and in the boardrooms of numerous government offices.
Conference Program
Discover the full CESBC 2022 program featuring the full day schedule, session details, speaker highlights, and venue information.