Kate divides her time between Carleton University where she is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the Sprott School of Business and a nonprofit organization called Common Approach to Impact Measurement where she is the Interim Executive Director.
Kate’s research on impact valuation has been published in leading scholarly journals. Ruff (2021) showed that impact valuation devices can reconfigure analysis. Ruff, Nappert & Graham (2022) explored the challenges of emic (in the voice of stakeholders) and polyvocal (many points of view) valuations.
As Interim ED of the Common Approach, Kate works in collaboration with partners to develop standards that enable interoperability of impact accounts without resorting to uniformity. The Common Impact Data Standard, for example, is integrated into the software to enable the interoperability of dissimilar indicators, outcomes and impact models.
She has a Bachelor of Commerce, McGill University (Montreal, QC), an MSc in Social Policy and Planning from the London School of Business (UK) and a Ph.D. in Business Administration (Accounting) from the Schulich School of Business, York University (Toronto, ON). She has served as a Board Member of Social Value International, Social Value Canada and as a member of the Standards Council of Canada Advisory Committee on Environment, Social and Governance.