Building a Culturally Responsive Independent Consulting Practice

Abstract

AbstractCultural responsiveness is an introspective, lifelong commitment to understanding unique cultural strengths, challenges, and their impact on community engagement. Moving beyond cultural competence (in which there is an expectation to possess a certain level of knowledge and skills in another culture), cultural responsiveness challenges professionals to recognize their own personal and professional biases and potential power dynamics, while working collaboratively to develop a dialogue‐based approach that responds to community needs. While this process is often detailed in how evaluators engage with clients and communities, as independent evaluators we can apply cultural responsiveness to how we develop our business structures and identify clients with whom to work. This chapter describes some of the influences on the author's personal commitment to a culturally responsive evaluation practice. Reaching beyond identity awareness, the author discusses how cultural responsiveness is demonstrated in practice. The chapter includes a set of questions related to business, client, project, and community engagement for evaluation consultants to answer and examine how their own work can be a culturally responsive practice to foster inclusion and support equity.