A team of practitioners, not a directory of generalists.
CometX works through a core team and a wider network of associates — researchers, evaluators, accessibility specialists, facilitators, and equity practitioners who have run the programs and systems they now help others build.
The expertise we assemble around an engagement.
Applied research & methods
Graduate-trained researchers in the social sciences, health, and education, with field experience in mixed-methods and participatory designs.
Evaluation
Evaluators experienced in developmental, formative, and outcome evaluation across non-profit, public sector, and philanthropic programs.
Digital accessibility
Auditors who test with assistive technology daily, work to WCAG 2.2, and can talk to developers in their own terms — including testers with lived experience of disability.
Equity, diversity, inclusion
Practitioners in equity assessment, anti-racism practice, GBA Plus, inclusive hiring systems, and women's leadership development.
Facilitation & engagement
Facilitators who run community consultations, advisory tables, and multi-stakeholder processes where the parties do not start out agreeing.
Learning design
Instructional designers who build curriculum, assessment, and accessible learning materials for adult professional audiences.
Knowledge mobilization
Plain-language writers, policy brief specialists, and data visualisation practitioners who make findings usable by non-specialists.
Data & analysis
Quantitative analysts and qualitative coders, with attention to disaggregated data collection done safely and ethically.
Community practice
Community-based practitioners and co-researchers who hold relationships in the settings where the work lands.
- A named lead who scopes the work and stays with it through hand-over.
- Associates selected for the specific methods and sector, and named in the proposal before you sign.
- Community co-researchers engaged and paid where the work concerns their community.
- No substitution of the team after award without your written agreement.
We are always meeting associates.
If you are a researcher, evaluator, accessibility specialist, facilitator, or equity practitioner interested in associate work — or a graduate student looking for a supervised placement — send a short note about the work you do and the settings you know well.
We particularly welcome practitioners from communities under-represented in research and consulting, and people with lived experience of the systems we are asked to assess.
What every associate signs up to.
Say what the evidence supports
Including when it is inconvenient for the client, the funder, or the centre's own prior work.
Declare conflicts
Prior relationships, competing engagements, and any interest in the outcome are disclosed before an engagement is accepted.
Do no extractive research
Communities are not a data source. If a community carries the burden of a study, the benefit comes back to them in a form they chose.
Accessible by default
Every slide, document, and session an associate produces meets WCAG 2.2 AA before it goes out — not on request afterwards.
Confidentiality
Client material stays client material. Anything published is generalised, anonymised, and cleared in writing first.
Hand the work over
The measure of an engagement is whether the client can do it next time without us. Associates build for that from day one.
Tell us what you are trying to change.
Most engagements begin with a 30-minute scoping call. Bring the problem, the timeline, and whatever evidence you already have — we will tell you honestly whether we are the right partner, and what a realistic scope looks like.
- Fixed-fee scopes with deliverables agreed in writing before work starts.
- Not-for-profit and community rates, plus pro bono capacity each year.
- Bilingual delivery (English and French) and fully accessible materials.
- Every engagement leaves behind tools your team can use without us.
An eminent bench, assembled per engagement rather than kept on payroll.
CometX runs on a small core team and a wider roster of senior associates. That structure is deliberate: it means the people on your project were chosen for your problem, and that a not-for-profit can put genuinely senior expertise on work that a consultancy would staff with juniors.
Academics and researchers
Doctorally qualified researchers holding or having held university and college appointments across the social sciences, health, education, and public policy. They bring methodological rigour, ethics experience, and standing with peer-reviewed literature.
Industry practitioners
Senior people from inside the sectors we serve — programme directors, HR and people leaders, digital product leads, and operations managers — who have implemented under real budgets and know where advice breaks down in practice.
Subject-matter experts
Specialists brought in for a defined question: accessibility conformance, pay equity analysis, statistical methods, procurement law, data governance, or a particular service domain.
Community leaders and co-researchers
Practitioners rooted in the communities a project concerns, engaged as paid contributors rather than consultees, and credited on the work they shape.
Policy and public sector advisers
People who have worked inside government programmes and funding bodies, and can say what will survive a briefing note and what will not.
Experts by experience
Accessibility testers and advisers with lived experience of disability, and people with direct experience of the services being evaluated. Their judgement is treated as expertise, and paid as such.
What "expert" means here.
The word gets used loosely, so it is worth being specific about the bar. Associates working on CometX engagements typically hold a graduate degree in a relevant discipline or an equivalent professional record, have at least a decade of applied practice, and have led the kind of work they are advising on — not only studied it.
- Named in the proposal before you sign, with the relevant credentials and prior work stated.
- Conflicts of interest declared before an engagement is accepted.
- Accessibility specialists tested against current WCAG releases, not a certificate from five years ago.
- No substitution after award without your written agreement.
A council that can say no.
Alongside the board, a volunteer advisory council of researchers, community leaders, and sector practitioners reviews the centre's research programme, its open resources, and the equity commitments in this site. The council exists so that decisions about what we publish and who we serve are not made only by the people being paid.
Council members serve fixed terms, declare their affiliations, and are recruited with attention to the communities the centre's work affects.
