Kate is a scholar-practitioner with over 25 years of experience working at the intersection of research, social impact, and organisational change. She has successfully launched three six-figure social enterprises and has worked across corporate, government, and civil society sectors in East Africa and the UK.

Her expertise lies in helping organisations move beyond surface-level monitoring to understanding systems change. She has designed impact measurement frameworks, developed data science tools for social impact, and led evaluations for organisations like Save the Children, UNICEF, the Swedish Embassy, and Porticus Foundation.

Kate holds a PhD in Human & Organisational Systems from Fielding Graduate University, where she developed her theory of "Doing the Right Thing", an exploration of how moral dilemmas are resolved in the realm of child protection. She is also an Accredited Social Value & SROI Practitioner, a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Institute of Social Innovation at Fielding Graduate University, a Research Associate at the University of Dar es Salaam, and an Associate Researcher at The University of Edinburgh's Centre for Research on Families and Relationships.

At her core, Kate is driven by a commitment to making social impact measurement more meaningful, ethical, and actionable—helping organisations not just track change, but actually create it.

Kate has seen firsthand the extraordinary social value created by grassroots organizations—and at the same time, how impact measurement often fails to capture the realities of people’s lives. Too often, organizations track what they do rather than the change they create. Data is collected for reports but rarely used as a tool for learning or better decision-making.

Through her work with communities, policymakers, and funders across Africa and Europe, Kate saw a fundamental truth: what gets measured shapes what gets valued. That’s why she developed ConnectGo—to build a social impact measurement approach that reflects what really matters.

ConnectGo’s methodology ensures that organisations don’t just measure outputs but illuminate the ripple effects of their work—from how young people see their futures to how conservation projects affect local communities. The goal? To make impact measurement a tool for continuous learning and adaptation—not just another compliance exercise.

Kate has worked at every level of the impact ecosystem—from young people on the frontlines of change to funders making high-level strategic decisions. That experience has shaped ConnectGo’s approach in three key ways:

1. Impact should be participatory – Kate’s background in Participatory & Appreciative Action Research means that ConnectGo doesn’t believe in extractive data collection. Instead, impact measurement should engage the people it seeks to serve—ensuring their voices shape the findings.

2. Impact should be ethical – Having led safeguarding research, evaluations on violence prevention, and child protection studies, Kate ensures that ConnectGo embeds ethical considerations into measurement—so that impact tracking is done with, not to, communities.

3. Impact should drive action – With experience designing strategies for major NGOs, foundations, and governments, Kate ensures that ConnectGo’s methodology helps organisations use data to make better decisions, not just generate reports.

One of the biggest lessons? Measurement is political.

• For communities, impact is about relationships, dignity, and long-term well-being.

• For funders, it’s about metrics, efficiency, and scale.

• For policymakers, it’s about evidence, accountability, and policy influence.

Kate has learned that bridging these perspectives is critical—impact measurement shouldn’t create a disconnect between lived experience and decision-making. Instead, it should help organisations balance rigour with relevance—capturing data that meets funding requirements without losing sight of what actually matters to people on the ground.

She has also seen how simplifying complexity doesn’t mean oversimplifying reality. Impact measurement needs to make sense of complexity while keeping the nuance that makes social change real. That’s why ConnectGo is designed to illuminate impact, not reduce it to numbers alone.

Kate’s PhD research explored the basic psychological process of Doing the Right Thing and Doing Things Right. She examined how people navigate ethical and moral dilemmas in taking proactive social action—often in situations where children were experiencing harm. Her work uncovered the hidden costs and improvisational decision-making that people go through when stepping up to protect others.

This thinking—how to do the right thing and do things right—is embedded in ConnectGo’s approach. It’s why ConnectGo isn’t just about providing metrics, but about helping organizations ask better questions—so that impact measurement moves beyond ticking boxes to fostering real accountability, ethical decision-making, and continuous learning.

Kate’s research also introduced the concept of second-order thinking in social impact measurement—the idea that every measurement choice has consequences. ConnectGo applies this principle by helping organizations think critically about what they measure and why—ensuring that impact assessment is not just efficient, but ethical and meaningful.

See Kate’s research portfolio here.

Kate’s impact isn’t just about research—it’s about helping organisations translate insights into action, whether through policy change, funding decisions, or programme design.

Kate’s impact spans multiple sectors, but a few key projects stand out:

• Harnessing Carbon Revenue for Sustainable Development (2024-Present) – Working with Carbon Tanzania to develop scalable, high-integrity social impact measurement for nature-based solutions, ensuring that forest conservation efforts generate meaningful benefits for local communities.

• Safety Solutions for Schools (2024-Present) – Developing an AI-powered application to help young people create personalised safety strategies to reduce peer-on-peer violence in schools.

• Enhancing Perceptions of Safety & Recognising Youth Leadership (2024) – Researching how young people experience and enhance safety in their communities, with a focus on youth-led initiatives for safer, more inclusive schools.

• Youth-Led Movement for Inclusive Schools (2023-2025) – Supporting Tanzanian students to drive change in their schools, engaging with educators and policymakers to improve safety and inclusion.

• Care Reform in Tanzania (2022-2023) – Worked with care-experienced young people to ensure their voices shaped Tanzania’s national care reform agenda.

• Social Value of Young Changemakers (2021) – Led an SROI study for Femina Hip, Tanzania’s largest multimedia civil society platform, helping them maximise their social impact.

• Power Dynamics & Violence Prevention (2021-2023) – Through Women Fund Tanzania-Trust, Kate’s research laid the groundwork for a more systemic approach to preventing violence against women and children.

• Social Norms & Inclusion in Schools (2021) – Applied social network analysis to understand how peer influence affects violence and inclusion in Tanzanian schools, shaping programmatic responses.

Kate’s work isn’t just about research—it’s about helping organizations translate insights into action, whether through policy change, funding decisions, or program design.

Kate’s approach is distinct because it moves beyond conventional metrics to capture the real, lived experience of change. Many impact measurement frameworks prioritise funder-driven indicators, but Kate believes that what gets measured should be shaped by the people most affected. That’s why her work integrates:

• Participatory methods – Whether it’s youth-led care reform in Tanzania or students designing safer schools, Kate’s research ensures that impact measurement amplifies the voices of those with lived experience.

• Social value and return on investment – Her work focuses on understanding the broader ripple effects of social change.

• Systems thinking and power analysis – From exploring power dynamics in violence prevention to researching social norms and inclusion in Tanzanian schools, Kate’s approach ensures that social impact is understood in context—not in isolation.

At the heart of her work is the conviction that impact measurement should be a tool for transformation, not just accountability.

Kate’s work has redefined the way people think about youth-led change, safeguarding, and social impact measurement—not just by generating insights, but by ensuring they drive real-world action. Her influence spans multiple sectors, shaping policies, programs, and funding priorities.

1. Amplifying youth voices in policy – Kate has ensured that care leavers in Tanzania had a direct voice in care reform, shifting the focus from top-down policies to lived realities. Through partnerships with the World Childhood Foundation, Railway Children Africa, and Pamoja Leo, she has challenged traditional power structures, making policy conversations more inclusive.

2. Bridging the gap between social and environmental impact – Through ConnectGo, Kate is leading the charge in social MRV (Measurement, Reporting, and Verification) for conservation and climate projects. She ensures that social impact is valued alongside environmental and economic factors, shaping the way nature-based solutions (NBS) and carbon projects engage with communities.

3. Strengthening education and child protection strategies – Her research with Aga Khan Foundation (values-based education) and Porticus (student safety in Tanzanian schools) has directly influenced how education systems integrate safeguarding, well-being, and student agency into their design.

4. Unpacking power dynamics in violence prevention – Kate’s work with Women Fund Tanzania-Trust has reshaped approaches to gender-based violence prevention, emphasizing systemic power imbalances, the role of agency, and transformative pathways to change.

Kate isn’t just driving conversations—she’s challenging assumptions, asking the right questions, and designing solutions that create lasting impact. Whether it’s ethical data use, impact measurement, or ensuring youth voices shape decision-making, her work brings clarity to complexity and turns insights into action.