Rebecca Pates is a Director at SQW who joined the company in 2004. She specialises in innovation, finance and business-related policies and place-based growth, with expertise in business case development, appraisal, evaluation and exploratory research. Rebecca is an expert member of the Cabinet Office/Evaluation Task Force’s Evaluation and Trial Advice Panel. Her clients include central government departments (including DSIT and Defra), UKRI, the British Business Bank, Combined Authorities and Universities.

Rebecca's evaluation experience includes developing evaluation frameworks, formative, process evaluation, impact, economic and value-for-money evaluation. She has experience of theory-based, quasi-experimental and RCT approaches. Project examples include evaluations of British Patient Capital, Debt Funds and the Nations and Regions Investment Funds for the British Business Bank, an Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships for UKRI, the Investor Partnership Pilot for Innovate UK, and a productivity grants scheme for Defra.

Rebecca has extensive experience of place-based economic analysis and spatial development. This includes research into place-based impacts of R&D and innovation investment for UKRI, and co-authoring Independent Economic Reviews for the Northern Powerhouse and Midlands