Jennica Nichols
She/her
Jennica is an evaluator and implementation scientist with over 15 years of experience working in public health and health care across academic, non-profit, and social enterprise spaces. She was born in Brampton, Ontario and has called Vancouver, British Columbia home since 2016. Her lived experiences of poverty, being a first-generation university student, caregiving, being queer, being white, and having & witnessing loved ones’ mental health struggles all weave together to inform her work. Jennica's guiding values include use, reciprocity, integrity, and justice. She holds a BSc (molecular biology and biotechnology), a Master of Public (epidemiology), the credential evaluator designation from the Canadian Evaluation Society, and a PhD (interdisciplinary studies).
Expertise
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Evaluation and research design
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Developmental, process & outcome evaluation
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Logic model and Theory of Change development
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Action and participatory research
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Mixed methods research
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Secondary data analysis studies
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Public health
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Knowledge translation products from research and implementation projects
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Quantitative data collection
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Surveys
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Secondary data analysis (census data, health databases)
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Document review
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Quasi-experimental studies
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Observations
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Qualitative data collection
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Interviewing (semi-structured, structured)
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Focus group facilitation
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Appreciative Inquiry
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Outcome mapping
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Case study
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Journey mapping
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Most Significant Change
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World café
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Quantitative data analysis (descriptive and inferential statistics)
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Qualitative data analysis (thematic, descriptive, interpretive description)
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Arts-based data collection
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Visual methods (photo elicitation, photovoice, drawing, collage)
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Literary methods (poetry)
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Reporting (for government, community, donors/funders)
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Academic manuscript writing (for peer-reviewed journals)
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Presentations, public lectures & keynote addresses
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Curriculum design
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Workshop facilitation & teaching (evaluation design, logic models, survey design, arts-based methods)
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Environmental scans, scoping reviews, systematic reviews
What drives Jennica?
Jennica is a methods nerd who loves “who” and “how” questions. Who decides the questions guiding organizational learning or an evaluation? How do we gather data to answer these questions? Who is involved in making sense of data? How do we use data meaningfully? Who decides what is meaningful? How can we use our work to disrupt the status quo? She works with clients to answer these questions by temporarily joining teams to help them implement strategic plans and evaluation frameworks. During our time together, she supports learning and accountability through data and dialogue. Together, she and her clients help programs and organizations evolve toward their goals while staying accountable to communities, funders, and each other.
What is the Best Part About Jennica's Job?
Helping people to become proactive about data and then witnessing them have the information they need to make decisions when they need it. People often reactively think about data when they must report to their boss or a funder, which is too late. Jennica's job is to understand client data needs and comfort levels with data along with the organization’s existing data processes and available resources. Together, they will create a system for collecting, analyzing, and using data that supports meaningful learning in a feasible and ongoing way. This proactive approach to data collection and use allows clients to do more with their data with less stress and resources. She gets a lot of joy from witnessing these learning loops in action and seeing clients use data to drive decision-making (nerdy but true).
