As we mark International Women’s Day, we celebrate the women whose vision, resilience, and leadership inspire us every day. Among them is Sarah Lowe MBE, a senior member of the Welsh Government’s analytical community and ADR Wales team member, whose pioneering work has transformed how population and administrative data are used across the UK.
With a 30‑year career in government, Sarah has brought optimism, imagination and unwavering public‑service commitment to every role she has held. Her work has reshaped how evidence informs policy, improved services across Wales and beyond, and opened doors for a new generation of analysts, particularly those whose minds work a little differently.
In the King’s Birthday Honours in 2025, Sarah was awarded the MBE for Services to Data Research, recognising her ground‑breaking influence on the way public sector data is accessed, linked, and used to improve and save lives.
From 2009 to 2018, she led a Welsh Government programme dedicated to maximising the use of existing data, securing multiple rounds of ESRC funding and delivering innovative data‑linking projects across Wales. Her determination to demonstrate the value of linking, analysing and re‑using data laid the foundations for a major national success story.
Her vision was instrumental in the creation of ADR Wales, a pioneering partnership between government and academia. This model, now central to shaping policy and improving services, grew directly from Sarah’s early conviction that Wales could lead the way in data‑driven social science.
Sarah’s dedication to public service and STEM has deep roots. She often reflects on the influence of her grandfather, a young Yorkshireman whose mathematical talent was spotted when he enlisted in World War II. Selected to train as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, he was deployed to India to decode Japanese messages, including their plans to surrender. He was among the first Allied personnel to know that the war was coming to an end.
For Sarah, following in his footsteps – like him, using her analytical skills to serve her country – has always been a profound source of pride. His story quietly shaped her belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when their strengths are recognised and encouraged.
Despite her achievements, Sarah speaks about the honour with characteristic humility and a desire to make other neurodivergent people feel seen: “Honestly, you could have knocked me down with a feather when the letter came through the door. It’s just not the sort of thing that happens to people like me, the Dyslexic little girl who was written off by some.”
And understandably so, she says, since she didn’t exactly shine at school, with her appalling spelling blighting her essays and finding any kind of mathematical or scientific equation completely incomprehensible – “If you told the 16-year-old me who was frankly lucky to get a C in Maths O Level I’d have a career in statistics, I’d’ve said you’d lost your marbles!”
Needless to say, she was advised university might not be the best fit. But having scraped the grades to study the more qualitative subject of Anthropology, she discovered, monitoring interview quotas in the telephone centre she worked in to support herself, that when the maths had a practical, applied purpose, it started to make sense.
A few years later with a master’s degree in medical demography under her belt, she joined the Social Survey Division of ONS and, five years later, the Knowledge and Analytical Services division of Welsh Government. Dubbed by one co-worker The Explainer of Complicated Things, she brings her specific learning difficulties to coaching maths-phobic colleagues in statistics – “because that was definitely me, too – in fact, show me some algebra and it still is!” – and likes to point out that analysing data is a lot more of an art than a science.
And the same ADHD that made her a disruptive influence in the classroom became a positive when hyper-focused on bringing her data linking vision to life. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way,” she says, “but learning from every failure and remembering we can change lives when we get it right always keeps me going.”
“But if this honour and my story do anything, I hope they show people who are wired a bit differently – and people who manage or might consider recruiting people who are wired a bit differently – that we sometimes see possibilities other people don’t see, and with the right encouragement and support can be tenacious enough to find unconventional ways to make them happen!”
Throughout her 30‑year career, Sarah has quietly and powerfully demonstrated the value of neurodiverse thinking, how seeing the world differently can produce breakthrough ideas, new models, and better outcomes for the public.
Sarah is also quick to recognise the people who supported her journey: “I couldn’t have done any of it without successive Chief Statisticians and senior analysts in Government listening to me and letting me pursue something a bit different that felt so important to me. I’m indebted to the ESRC for the early funding that allowed me to demonstrate its importance, and to the many academic and government analysts, policy colleagues, and public and third sector organisations who saw what I was trying to achieve and got on board.”
“It’s incredibly satisfying to see the oak tree that’s grown out of such a tiny acorn. All my supposedly ‘under the radar’ work – everything aimed at making analysts’ jobs more interesting and the lives of the people of Wales better – has been recognised in this amazing way. I couldn’t be more delighted!”
Sarah’s story is one of persistence, imagination, and courage – an example of how unconventional thinkers can shape the future of public service. Her work has opened new possibilities for data‑driven policy, created opportunities for researchers across the UK, and championed the strengths that neurodiverse minds bring to complex challenges.
We are proud to celebrate Sarah Lowe MBE – a trailblazer, a role model, and an exceptional colleague whose contributions continue to make a lasting difference.