Director: F. Harry Cummings , Ph.D., R.P.P .

Harry Cummings has Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Geography from Clark University and a B.A. Honours from Western. He is a Registered Professional Planner and a member of the Canadian Evaluation Society. His experience includes international rural development and project management of large interdisciplinary rural development projects. In Canadian and international contexts he has also worked on rural-urban issues including migration, land use and regional planning. His urban planning experience includes water conservation, retail planning, transportation planning, industrial planning, economic and financial analysis and zoning and severance issues. He has experience in Canada , USA , Poland , Ethiopia , Malawi all of Southeast Asia , India , Nepal Turkey, Portugal and Panama . His specialty areas include economic impact assessment, evaluation, economic impact of agriculture, survey and research methods. He has managed over 75 major consulting projects with budgets as high as $40 million and as many as 40 staff.

Harry is a full professor at the School of Rural Planning and Development at the University of Guelph . He has supervised over 120 graduate students and teaches graduate courses in Regional Economics, Program Evaluation, Community Economic Development and Research Methods, He is an active community member and has served on the boards of many community organizations. Harry is fluent in French and Indonesian.

Dr. Cummings heads a core team of multi-disciplinary consultants:

Don Murray , B.A., M.Sc.

Don has a Masters Degree in Rural Planning and Development from the University of Guelph and a Diploma in Agriculture from the Ontario Agricultural College. Don possesses a solid background in evaluation planning, design and implementation. He is a member of the Canadian Evaluation Society. He places a strong emphasis on producing information that enhances the decision making process. Don's work experience touches on a number of different areas. He has worked with local economic development agencies in evaluating community economic development projects and he has monitored and evaluated public sector service delivery and the professional development of service providers. Don also has extensive experience in conducting needs assessments. Don writes and designs questionnaires, conducts interviews and focus groups, and conducts spreadsheet analysis. He is very familiar with Statistics Canada data.

Don has a long and diverse work history in the agriculture sector. Don managed a 200-acre dairy farm in Halton County for ten years and spent several years in New Zealand and Australia as a crop and herd technician. Since 1998, Don has worked with HCA on a number of studies that examined the economic impact of agriculture on the local economy. He has also examined the impact of the agricultural export industry and farmers' markets on the local economy. In 1996, Don worked in Belize as a supervisor and field excavator as part of the Belize Valley Archeological Reconnaissance Project.

Don has been a board member of the Guelph and District Multicultural Centre (GDMC) and sits on the festival fundraising committee. Don serves as entertainment/volunteer coordinator for the annual Guelph Multicultural Festival and he sits on the Festival Fundraising Committee.

Douglas C. Obright , B.Sc.

Douglas has a Masters degree in Geography from Queen's University and a certificate in Project Cost Management from Ryerson Polytechnical University. He is a full member of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the Canadian Institute of Planners. He began his career in the real estate industry and followed that with a series of planning positions with the Ontario Government. From his work with the province, he gained extensive experience in development approvals, policy development, program evaluation, regulatory and legislation revisions and land-related information. He has undertaken numerous socio-economic-environmental studies and is familiar with a broad spectrum of socio-economic measures. He is highly creative and draws on his extensive planning background to develop realistic approaches to specific challenges. Douglas is results oriented and particularly enjoys working with clients to clearly define their overall goal, the initiatives needed to achieve that goal and the specifics, which need to be acted upon.

In his spare time, Douglas serves on the Don Watershed Regeneration Council - a group responsible for advising the Toronto Region Conservation Authority and for pursuing initiatives, which will improve the quality of life, particularly the natural environment, within the Don River Watershed.

Fredrick D. Ashbury , Ph.D.

is the president of PICEPS Consultants. Inc. He holds a PhD in Sociology from York University. He has 17 years experience in behavioural research and program evaluation in health and education. He has held senior positions in research and program evaluation in the following organizations: PAE Research, Workers' Compensation Board of Ontario, National Cancer Institute of Canada, and OpTx Corporation. Dr Ashbury has expertise in many areas of research design, including clinical trials, case-control studies, survey research, and qualitative research studies (including focus groups, key informant interviews, personal interviews, participation observations). His research interests include health promotion planning and evaluation, professional education, physician behaviour change and patient quality of life. Dr Ashbury consults to government, not-for-profit and private sectors, in Canada, the US, Germany, the UK and Australia. He holds academic appointments at the University of Toronto and McGill University, and he lectures on health promotion, research methods, and program evaluation. Dr Ashbury has received funding from leading granting agencies, and published and presented more than 65 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, scientific abstracts, book chapters and public documents. He sits on the National Medical Advisory Board of CAREpath Inc., the Research Advisory Board of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, and the board of directors of the Canadian Association of Psychosocial Oncology. Dr Ashbury is a member of numerous professional organizations based in the US, Canada and Europe.

Hubert Paulmer

Hubert has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a Masters in Agriculture from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in India. He also completed a Post-graduate Diploma in International Development and Rural Planning from University of Guelph. He is a Professional Agrologist in Ontario and an active member of the Canadian Evaluation Society and the American Evaluation Association. He began his career as a banker, financing agricultural and rural projects and managing micro-credit schemes. He later moved to the agri-food and commodity sector and has extensive experience in strategic planning, market linkages, international trade, project management, supply-chain management, managing and developing SMEs, results-based management, stakeholder and client relationship management, capacity building, partnership development, evaluation and government liaison in various continents.

Hubert has experience in the Middle-East and South Asia, West Africa, Central Africa, South Africa and Western Europe besides Canada. He has been involved in financial and economic studies of various projects. As an evaluator he has experience in developing and implementing evaluation plans, institutional assessment, developing research tools and conducting interviews, focus groups and surveys in various sectors. He was a member for two years in the UNICEF’s committee in Nigeria for Vitamin A fortification.

At HCA, Hubert has been involved in the labour market study in Huron and Perth counties; review of quality assurance program for College of Veterinarians; health needs and services research project in East Wellington; and the economic impact study of aquaculture in Northern Ontario. He was a member of the Institutional Assessment and Policy Analysis mission of HCA in Srilanka for the CIDA funded water and sanitation project.  He also led evaluation / baseline study assignments in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka and Zambia.

Hubert has presented papers comparing evaluation guidelines and log-frames of bilateral, multilaterals, foundations and international NGOs

Nichole Fraser MacDonald, B.A., M.Sc.

Nichole has both a Masters degree in Rural Planning and Development from the University of Guelph and a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Sociology from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. Her background includes project planning and evaluation with NGO's; in-depth qualitative research on youth issues; and coordination of the University of Guelph's International Comparative Rural Policy Studies program. She is currently a member of the board of The Ontario Rural Council and Chair of its Rural Youth Working Group. She is also a member of the Canadian Evaluation Society and a provisional member of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute.

Nichole is experienced at developing research tools; conducting interviews, focus groups, surveys and site visits; developing training tools and carrying out training workshops; writing and editing reports; and successfully managing project human resources, communications, budgets and timelines. Nichole is skilled at qualitative analysis and is highly experienced at Internet and database research.

Nichole has been involved in research for rural community development projects, including the implementation of a Photo Novella process. She has also carried out evaluation activities for clients in the health care, economic development, rural planning, and youth sectors, among others. She has facilitated participatory evaluation planning workshops and carried out evaluation activities for a variety of clients.

Alain Cummings , Dip.

Alain has a diploma from Conestoga College in the field of Recreation and Leisure Services. Alain brings a lot of energy to the environment. He places a strong emphasis on productivity and getting the work completed properly the first time. Alain's work experience focuses on his recreational background. He approaches any new project with excitement and innovation. He is quite comfortable with most office tools including; Word, Excel, Power Point Presentations, and SPSS as well as others. Alain is happy to evaluate all quantitative data that comes his way, be it through telephone questionnaires or the most recent Census data.

Alain has completed a community-based survey identifying the needs of the Landsdowne community in order to serve them most effectively with a new Community Centre. He has also participated in the evaluation of the delivery of a recreation based quality assurance program to post-secondary students, known as HIGH FIVE. Alain has also had the opportunity to develop spreadsheets in order to effectively interpret outputs from several different projects including Cancer Care Ontario 's “Five to Ten a Day Program” and the Ontario College of Pharmacists' Quality Assurance Program.

Alain is currently completing a Degree in Child Youth and Family, as a Bachelor of Applied Science program at the University of Guelph.

Techiya Loewen Dip.

Techiya has a diploma from Niagara College as a Legal Assistant. She has a vast range of business experience both inside and outside of the legal profession. Techiya has worked as a traffic manager, business owner, administrator for a religious institution and as an office manager. While working in each of these various capacities she has continued to work in the legal field.

Techiya provides HCA with general project assistance to each of its consultants, together with accounts receivable, accounts payable and file maintenance. In addition, she identifies project leads, reviews proposals, assists with resumes and CV development and she drafts all manner of contracts. She ensures the accurate completion of all proposal certification requirements. Techiya maintains liaisons with clients and she strives to work closely with our client's account payable departments.

Jeremy Cummings , B.Sc.

Jeremy is a graduate from the University of Guelph Computer Science Program. He has worked with and is an expert in a half-dozen different programming languages, and is the current web-master for this site. He uses software engineering methodologies for all important endeavors. Some of the technologies he used for this site's development include HTML, JavaScript, Cookies and Photoshop. He has also used Shockwave technology to bring abstract concepts to easily understandable reality. Jeremy has set up an office network for HCA, and he has also helped in several of HCA's surveys, in surveying and helping with the data analysis. Jeremy is bilingual in French and English. Jeremy is taking HCA into the 21st century with cutting edge web-design, and loves implementing and researching the best technologies.

Working with people is something that Jeremy also loves to do. He has worked with people extensively in a variety of positions, including sales and marketing as well as technical support, and is sensitive to all user concerns and issues.