News
16 February 1979 – 19 September 2024
It is with great sadness that we are writing a memorial tribute to our friend and colleague, Danni Mason.
Danni spent almost 20 years working to improve the use of high-quality evidence in policy making, as an academic, a researcher, and a civil servant. She brought passion and energy into the office and into everything she did and will be deeply missed.
Her emphasis on being responsive to the needs of government – both in the sense of being timely and in giving them what is most helpful – have fundamentally shaped the way in which we think about what we do and how we do it. We valued her insights, and we know the people working in government departments and agencies that she supported felt the same.
At What Works Growth, Danni promoted excellent evaluation methods, always with an eye for pragmatism. Danni produced evaluation guidance for DLUHC on evaluation of levelling up programmes and worked with Cabinet Office and DLUHC to inform the evaluation section of the Levelling Up White Paper. She sat on the Green Book Network and contributed to the review of Green Book methodology. Danni led on our responsive briefings to government to ensure that evidence was embedded in policy design, somehow managing to be both extremely quick and very thorough.
Danni brought expertise to her role as Deputy Director of Policy from her previous roles at the RSA as Education Director, at the Education Endowment Foundation as Head of Research, in the What Works Team in Cabinet Office, managing analytical teams at HM Treasury and the Child Poverty Unit, and as a member of the Government Social Research Board. Earlier in her career, she worked as a researcher at the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion on the evaluation of welfare-to-work and area-based initiatives, and at Oxford University where she contributed to the development of the Index of Multiple Deprivation. We are certain that the many people whose lives she touched in those roles are also feeling a sense of loss.
Our team at What Works Growth will miss her deeply, not just for her sound advice and enthusiasm, and the positivity, kindness and generosity that she brought to everything she did, but also for her friendship.
Our thoughts are with her family and friends.
