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
