Donald is an Associate Director at SQW who joined the company in 2014. He specialises in research and evaluation related to local economic development, research and innovation, and business growth. He is particularly interested in how these topics overlap to drive place based competitiveness.

Donald is an experienced project manager and has successfully managed studies across the policy cycle, from research on specific sectors or places, onto demand assessments, business cases and appraisals, and evaluations and economic impact assessments.

At a sub-national level, Donald’s clients include Combined Authorities, Councils, universities, and the private sector. Spatially, much of this work has been across the North and Midlands, as well as Northern Ireland and Wales. His national clients include Innovate UK, MHCLG, Homes England and STFC. Donald is currently managing our multi-year evaluation of the Innovation Accelerator programme and our support to 13 local areas in the design and delivery of their devolved investment fund evaluations.