Evelyn Gaye Mara, owner and principal consultant of Professional Development Services, has over 25 years' experience strengthening professional competence and communications in organizations and has consulted, written, and spoken extensively on those subjects. 

In-House and Consulting Experience.  Ms. Mara has been engaged since 1976 in developing professional education, training, and mentoring programs and resources; performance appraisal and feedback systems; and team communications and performance. Over a period of 18 years, she developed and managed attorney programs at three major law firms: Howrey & Simon, Miller & Chevalier, and Steptoe & Johnson. As a consultant she has worked in a wide variety of settings: law firms of under 100 to over 1,000 lawyers, government and corporate legal divisions, nonprofit organizations, law school faculty and CLE offices, and professional associations.   Based on client needs, she can also bring in talented colleagues to augment the size and capabilities of the consulting team.

Publications and Presentations.  Ms. Mara founded, edits, and publishes the journal Professional Development Quarterly and the comprehensive continuing legal education resource The Capital CLE Calendar.  

She is a co-author of a competency model for law firm associates developed in a two-year study led by George Washington University's Center for Law Practice Strategy and Management and funded by the ALA Foundation, in which 45 law firms and hundreds of attorneys and law firm managers participated.

Ms. Mara is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and books on career and performance development issues for professionals. She has been an invited speaker at more than 50 professional conferences and seminars since 1983, sponsored by ABA, ALA, ALI-ABA, ASTD, the D.C. Bar, Glasser Legal Works, ISPI, Massachusetts CLE, NALP, NASAGA, and others.

Other Professional Activities.  Ms. Mara is a founding member of the Professional Development Consortium, a national association of lawyer training and development professionals. In collaboration with the Washington Area Professional Development Administrators (now the DC Professional Development Group), which she co-founded, she designed and conducted the 1995 Professional Development Survey of Large Law Offices in the Greater Washington/Baltimore Area.  She is a member of the American Society for Training and Development, former Field Editor of ASTD’s Forum on Continuing Professional Education, and former President of the International Society for Performance Improvement’s award-winning Potomac Chapter. From 1980 through 1993 she undertook numerous offices and projects for the National Association for Law Placement, including service on the executive board, creating NALP’s 1993 In-House Training Resource Guide, and designing and conducting a series of performance appraisal workshops for law firm partners. Her publications and workshop designs have won awards, respectively, from the International Society for Performance Improvement and the Association of Legal Administrators.

Education.  Ms. Mara has an M.A. in Human Resource Development and Management (1988); her graduate research included a study of performance appraisal in professional service firms. She earned Myers-Briggs certification in 1992, and has pursued advanced training in group facilitation, team building, and technology applications as well as other regular continuing education