User:Traceywond

Dr Tracey Wond is a business and marketing consultant who specialises in the use of evidence to inform decision-making.

She lives in Derbyshire, UK. She was born in Dundee, Scotland.

Education Tracey graduated with a 1st class honours in Human Resource Management from Teesside University, winning CIPD student of the year. During that time she worked for North Yorkshire Police as a HR Officer and Project Officer, on a process efficiency review project, part of a wider transformation project across the organisation. In 2007, she returned to study at Teesside University after securing a studentship, and at the same time worked with a public sector organisation evaluating a multi-million pound project.

After posts at Teesside University, and University of Wales: Trinity St David, she is now Programme Leader for Professional Doctorates (Business) at the University of Derby. She has also acted as Workforce Development Fellow for work-based learners studying on coaching and mentoring programmes.

Tracey's PhD Her PhD was an ethnographic account of a three year long programme evaluation in a Local Enterprise Growth Initiative. The study contributed to evaluation theory by identifying several key findings that occur throughout evaluation practice, in the areas of: stakeholder relations; the role of an evaluator; evaluation purposes; and evaluation methodology. The use of ethnography was central to the originality of the contribution, allowing a comprehensive, first-hand, and longitudinal reflection to be made; such a reflection did not exist in evaluation literature. The study found a great deal of evidence to support disruptions to evaluation practice, the sensitive nature of stakeholder influence, the complexity of the evaluator role, and the significance of political context. The contribution to knowledge through the study was not so much that these confirmatory findings existed, but rather the auto-ethnographic nature of the data, revealing the evaluators own experience of conducting the programme evaluation and being an evaluation practitioner. The study found a host of phenomena occurring in evaluation in the public realm, and ultimately found that areas of evaluation practice could fail, whether by the fault of the evaluator or other stakeholders. Politics, role ambiguity and government decision processes were also found to affect evaluation. The study recommended that evaluation practitioners, commissioners and other stakeholders use the longitudinal findings to better understand the entirety of evaluation practice. In so doing, this research filled crucial gaps in literature and acted to enhance evaluation practice.

Tracey's research Her research has been internationally recognised through publications including ‘Public Management Review’ and ‘Policy and Society’. She reviews for a number of public administration journals.

Community work Tracey has long given back to her communities. At a young age, she was nominated for Millennium Volunteer of the year. In 2016 a community group, that she started and ran, won the South Derybshire Community Group of the Year award. She has been a trustee for the local CVS/food bank. She is also a Trustee and actively manages the community hall.

In 2022/2023, she has been pivotal in leading a campaign against a second incinerator in South Derbyshire which has seen her featured in local TV and press.

Family life Tracey has a partner and two sons.