Mary Kane, MSLIS, is President of Concept Systems, Inc., a social research and evaluation firm specializing in capturing the knowledge and opinions of people and agencies to improve organizations, cultures and environments. Ms. Kane assesses and addresses the needs of local, national and international agencies, guiding government offices, foundations, professional associations, corporations and academic and research institutions to awareness, consensus and decisions. A special emphasis in Mary's work is creating awareness of "group wisdom" in a community or organization, and guiding groups to harness collective knowledge to produce meaningful, measurable and useful outcomes for program, policy and population change. Ms. Kane is author or co-author of many publications on the applications of Group Concept Mapping (GCM) in organizational decision-making and strategic planning and evaluation. Her current research focuses on "Valuing Voice" in underrepresented communities to support sustainable change; and expanding the definition of competencies for evaluation. As first author of the authoritative text on concept mapping, Concept Mapping for Planning and Evaluation, Mary was able to use her deep knowledge in partnership with Dr. Rosas to create, in this volume, an exciting expansion of GCM's story Prof. Trochim is the Director of Evaluation for the Weill Cornell Clinical and Translational Science Center -- a collaboration of Weill Cornell Medical College, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, The Hospital for Special Surgery, Hunter College and Cornell Cooperative Extension -- and participates actively in the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards national evaluation. He is developing evaluation systems for the HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Networks of the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He is actively engaged in research with the National Science Foundation incorporating systems approaches in the evaluation of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs. And, as Director of Evaluation for Extension and Outreach, Prof. Trochim works with Cornell University Cooperative Extension programs throughout New York State on planning and implementing evaluation systems for their outreach and education programs.
