Most Important Skills for an Independent Impact and Evaluation Consultant
Rakhee's success as an Impact & Evaluation Consultant hinges on a blend of strong soft skills—collaboration, adaptability ("shifting gears all the time"), and prioritizing personal sustainability—and the ability to translate complex data analysis into easily digestible information for non-technical audiences; this skill, conveying information "in a way that's easy for people to understand," is what sets Rakhee apart.
Collaboration, Data Analysis and Communication, Adaptability and Flexibility, Growth Mindset, Personal Sustainability
Advizer Information
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Rakhee Patel
Impact & Evaluation Consultant
Independent Consultant
Wellesley College (studied abroad for 1 semester at University College London)
UCLA | M.S. and Ph.D. in Statistics (2011)
Mathematics, Data Science, Statistics
Consulting & Related Professional Services, Nonprofit, Foundations & Grantmaking
Consulting
Honors Student, Student Athlete
Video Highlights
1. Collaboration skills are essential, encompassing teamwork with colleagues and clients, and facilitating collaboration within organizations.
2. Adaptability and flexibility are crucial for handling diverse projects and quickly switching between tasks.
3. Strong data analysis skills combined with the ability to clearly communicate complex data to non-technical audiences are highly valuable.
Transcript
What skills are most important for a job like yours?
From a soft skills perspective, I think collaboration is the key underlying value in how I do my work. It involves collaborating with my coworkers on how we approach projects together and being really open and flexible.
It also means collaborating with our clients and facilitating collaboration within organizations. Helping organizations see the benefit of this is important, as many work in silos. Showing them ways they can come together will help people be more efficient, and I think that's the core thing.
I'd also mention adaptability and flexibility. When you work with many different clients on various types of projects, you're constantly wearing different hats and shifting gears. I need to be nimble, agile, and flexible, adapting and switching quickly.
I might have four back-to-back meetings in a day, all on completely different projects. So, it's really important to be able to adapt. If you want to be a consultant and be happy, personal sustainability is crucial.
It's not really a skill, but it's something important to center on: how to balance everything while keeping in mind what I need to succeed and be happy. For me, the most important thing in this role is ensuring I have joy in what I'm doing and that it facilitates joy in the parts of my life that are not work.
A growth mindset is also really important in nonprofit work. The context is always changing, and you'll always learn new perspectives. You're serving communities that might be different from your own background or lived experience.
So, it's important to be open to other people's perspectives and allow yourself to grow, accepting that you don't know everything. Things you might have believed then, you might change. I think that's a really important thing.
In terms of hard skills, I'm a statistics and data evaluation person. So, I think data analysis and statistical skills are important. Being able to understand data is key, but what's propelled my career is not just having the technical coding skills to do the analysis, but being able to convey data to people who don't have technical skills.
That's what's set me apart. When you work in a technical background, a lot of people are excellent at their jobs but not great at explaining them to someone who doesn't understand data. Being able to visualize and find different ways to communicate data is a really, really important skill.
I'm sure there are many other helpful skills, but I think being able to convey information in a way that's easy for people to understand is a key thing in any job.