Sally Duckworth

Sally, a Partner of Litmus, has nearly 20 years consulting experience, designing and leading research, monitoring and evaluation for New Zealand government agencies and business, Pacific government agencies and United Nations agencies.

Sally has proven expertise engaging stakeholders and communities in meaningful and sustainable dialogue to inform government and organisational strategies and policies.

She has significant expertise leading qualitative research on complex and sensitive social and economic issues such as child immunisation, quitting smoking, HIV prevention, injury prevention, tax compliance and enhancing women’s economic security. Sally works effectively to include marginalised people in qualitative research to ensure their voices are heard. She is regularly called on to provide coaching on qualitative research design and application.

She has led monitoring and evaluation teams to assess the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of national and regional development programmes across Asia and Pacific regions, including in fragile states.

Sally also has significant expertise in communications and branding research and advises government and business on ways to maximise the effectiveness, relevance and authenticity of their strategic and operational communications.

Sally has a masters degree in Social Anthropology (Auckland).

Liz Smith

Liz co-founded Litmus in 2001. For the last 20 years, Liz has undertaken social research and evaluation projects in New Zealand and the Pacific region that contribute to wider positive social outcomes. She works across many diverse sectors and has particular knowledge and expertise in the health, education and justice sectors.

Liz is an evaluation expert who specialises in designing and leading multi-disciplinary and complex long-term evaluations to assess the outcomes and impacts of significant programmes and policies. She also works flexibly with clients to undertake small-scale, targeted and time pressured evaluations to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of programmes in a cost effective manner.

Liz has worked collaboratively with a number of policy teams in the review of legislation to identify options for legislated change to deliver desired societal outcomes. On enacting new legislation, Liz has developed monitoring and evaluation frameworks to enable government agencies assess whether intended outcomes are emerging.

Liz also works with government and businesses to strategically assess and facilitate organisational change, and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their products and services. These challenging and varied roles have focused on e-channel, workforce development, service integration, leadership development, price sensitivity and product and service development.

Liz is a recognised commentator on ethics in evaluation and research, and is often called on to present nationally and internationally. Before commencing her long standing career in research and evaluation, Liz was a registered nurse in the United Kingdom.

Liz has a first-class honours degree in Sociology and Education Studies (Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom).

Margot Szamier

Margot has 17 years of experience catalysing change through her work in communities, civil society organisations, government and multilateral agencies. She has lived and worked in six countries and is currently based in Honiara, Solomon Islands where she leads Litmus’s development portfolio.

Margot is strongly committed to gender equality and social justice. Margot specialises in providing technical assistance in gender analysis, programme design, developing monitoring frameworks, and evaluating the process and impact of development interventions. With an interest in strengthening multi-stakeholder collaboration, her work involves fostering coalitions and their capacity to collect, analyse and use evidence for decision making and greater commitment to policies and programmes.

Margot has experience in participatory methodologies, a range of engagement initiatives, organisational capacity development and training, and monitoring international agreements, particularly around gender equality, HIV and AIDS, and women, peace and security.

Kiri joined the Litmus team in April 2009. She is an experienced researcher with nine years of social research and evaluation experience, including seven years in the New Zealand public sector.

Kiri specialises in public health research and evaluation. Prior to working at Litmus, Kiri was a senior member of the Health Sponsorship Council’s research team. In this role, she developed programme and evaluation plans for the organisation’s tobacco control, healthy eating and skin cancer prevention programmes.

In her role at Litmus, Kiri has continued to strengthen her expertise in public health research and evaluation. Kiri has helped government and non-government organisations design and evaluate their tobacco control programmes, including undertaking formative research with Māori and Pacific smokers and parents and caregivers, evaluating a youth tobacco control advocacy initiative and a youth smoking cessation programme, and conducting literature reviews on youth smoking uptake and tobacco control in overseas jurisdictions.

Kiri has a strong interest in social marketing the use of commercial marketing tools and approaches to achieve positive social change – and is committed to providing social marketing practitioners with in-depth insights into audience attitudes, beliefs and behaviours.

Kiri has a masters degree in Geography (Auckland) and a post-graduate certificate in Public Health (Otago).

Michele Grigg

Michele is an experienced researcher, with 18 years of experience in public health research and evaluation, campaign research and outcomes analysis. Michele’s particular area of interest is population health. Michele is acknowledged as one of the leading experts on tobacco control research in New Zealand.

Michele’s strength is in ensuring research and evaluation has a practical purpose for service and programme development. While at Litmus, Michele has been a core part of the team evaluating the implementation of the Human Papillomavirus Immunisation Programme, undertook audience research with parents and caregivers of young children, and evaluated implementation of a cross-District Health Board strategy for public health. In addition, she has undertaken a number of projects for government and non-government agencies that focus on tobacco control.

Before working as Research Manager at The Quit Group, Michele worked for a number of years in health and Māori development in the public sector. She was involved in leading the development and publication of national outcome monitoring reports and contributed to development of the first national programme of population health surveys.

Michele has a masters degree in Demography and Geography (Waikato) and a post-graduate certificate in Public Health (Otago).

Janette Brocklesby

Janette brings to the Litmus team her extensive expertise in social and marketing research and evaluation. She has spent over 25 years with leading research houses in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. 

It is difficult to find an area or topic Janette has not researched, from providing direction for the development of a communications campaign to reduce workplace fatality in the agricultural sector, to a major evaluation of the Paid Parental Leave scheme, to segmenting New Zealand’s domestic tourism market. Janette has considerable experience in understanding the needs of stakeholder groups and targeting communication and services. 

Janette has an honours degree in Social Sciences (Coventry), a masters degree in Educational Psychology (Aston, Birmingham) and a post-graduate certificate in Education (London).

Susanna Kelly

Susanna has over 10 years of research and evaluation experience in the United Kingdom and across the Pacific, including New Zealand. Susanna joined the Litmus team after working as a senior researcher and development advisor for the Learning and Skills Network (United Kingdom), where she was responsible for delivering research, evaluation and professional development programmes. 

Susanna is a social anthropologist by training and has conducted policy, academic and action research in the United Kingdom and the Pacific region (Vanuatu, Fiji and New Zealand). Susanna’s key areas of expertise include qualitative research design and methods, ethnographic research, and the monitoring and evaluation of programme impact. Susanna also has designed and delivered training in research methods. Susanna has a strong interest in participatory methodologies and evaluating development interventions in the Pacific. Susanna is fluent in Bislama (Vanuatu) and Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea) and familiar with Nakanamanga (central Vanuatu).

Susanna has a PhD in gender, kastom and participation in traditional and cash economies in Vanuatu (University College London) and a masters degree in Social Anthropology (Cambridge).

Lisa Gregg

Lisa Gregg joined the Litmus team in May 2011. Lisa came to Litmus after more than three years research experience in the public sector, at the Ministry of Justice. During this time Lisa was involved in delivering the national victimisation survey (The NZ Crime and Safety Survey), research into the Youth Court, and a literature review on bias against ethnic minority and indigenous peoples in the criminal justice system.

In her role at Litmus, Lisa has further utilised her skills in qualitative interviewing on a range of projects, including research exploring New Zealand Police partnerships, and a case study of a Nicotine Replacement Therapy initiative at Hawke’s Bay District Health Board. Lisa is also a key member of the Bowel Screening Pilot evaluation team.

Lisa has a masters degree in Psychology (Waikato).

Annette Chapman

Annette manages the Litmus office and finances. She ensures the smooth running of the office, oversees day-to-day relationships with suppliers and manages the accounts for the company.

She is highly efficient and responsive, and an excellent problem solver.