It is my pleasure to present Baroness Manningham-Buller for admission as an Honorary Fellow of the Academy. Probably most well known for her role as head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller’s great drive, tenacity and interest in how science can improve health, have brought her to her current role as Chair of the largest charity in Britain, the Wellcome Trust.
After reading English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, Eliza worked as a teacher for three years at Queen’s Gate School in London. During her time teaching, it quickly became clear to her that she did not want to remain in the educational system but was uncertain about exactly what she wanted to do instead. Ignoring the advice of her father, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller who had served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor in the Conservative administrations of Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home - who suggested that Eliza follow him into the world of law, which at the time she felt would be a boring path - her calling came through a chance encounter at a drinks party, where she met someone who would send her off to the Ministry of Defence for an interview in the mysteriously named ‘Room 055’.
She joined MI5 in 1974 and the main focus of her work eventually became counter-terrorism. Early in her career she worked on counter-espionage. She later led the international counter-terrorism section at the time of the Lockerbie bombing and also served in a senior liaison post to Washington during the first Gulf War. The Government’s push for the security service to take responsibility for intelligence work against Irish terrorism on the British mainland resulted in an opportunity for Eliza to lead the newly created Irish counter-terrorism section in 1992, where she made her mark very decisively. She was subsequently promoted to the Security Service’s Management Board where she was in charge, in succession, of surveillance and technical work, the investigation of Irish terrorism, and the finance and IT branches.
A natural leader, Eliza Manningham-Buller excelled in her roles at MI5, never forgetting the importance of accessibility, the human touch and humour – despite the very serious nature of her work. She was appointed Deputy Director of the service in 1997, overseeing operational work and liaison with other intelligence and enforcement agencies and in 2002, she became Director General of MI5. During her tenure, achievements included doubling the size of the Service and transforming their approach to the recruitment and the professional development of staff through the establishment of a training academy. Also notably, under her direction, terror threat assessments were made public for the first time. In recognition of her services to the Security Service, in 2005 Eliza was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the Bath in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Eliza Manningham-Buller resigned from MI5 in 2007 – after 33 years in the security service - where she had built a formidable reputation as a fiercely intelligent, sociable and driven individual. In 2008, she was appointed as an independent, crossbench Life Peer in the House of Lords and she has since served on various Parliamentary committees, including the Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology between 2013 and 2016 - a period during which the Committee reviewed, among other issues, regenerative medicine, scientific infrastructure, international STEM students and priorities for scientific research. Parallel to her work at the Lords, Eliza chose also to bring her skills and expertise back to education with an appointment to the Council of Imperial College London in 2009. She went on to Chair Imperial’s Council between 2011 and 2015, thoroughly enjoying overseeing reform of the College’s governance structure, the development of an impressive new White City Campus in West London and the recruitment of a new President.
In 2014 she was appointed to the Order of the Garter to acknowledge her contribution to national life. Eliza eventually relinquished her role at Imperial in 2015 to devote her attention to, in her own words `making a real difference to health’ - as the first woman to Chair the Wellcome Trust’s Board of Governors.
A global charity, which exists to improve health by assisting great ideas to flourish, the Wellcome Trust is one of the most influential bodies in global medical research. Eliza had been a Governor at Wellcome since 2008, this experience developing in her a passion for science – through her contact with many fantastic scientists and her exposure to a wealth of new ideas. Upon her appointment as Chair of Wellcome, Eliza channelled this newfound excitement into ensuring the long-term funding of discovery science, as well as seizing and encouraging as many opportunities as possible for creative and innovative ideas to make a real difference to health. Her priorities for the role currently include vaccination, fighting drug resistance and research into the links between health, climate and environmental change. She is also a champion for diversity in science, pushing for flexibility for all employees and making it as easy as possible for people from different backgrounds to contribute to science.
Eliza has committed herself to making a positive impact at the Wellcome Trust. Her major contributions so far include the modernisation of Wellcome’s governance framework, providing support to the Diversity and Inclusion strategy as well as work on education priority areas and research leadership and extending the policy and global reach of Wellcome. She is, of course a familiar figure at Wellcome, combining formidable strategic leadership with an ability to listen, to understand and to engage with people at all levels - skills perhaps honed in her earlier career.
In addition to her national honours of the highest level, Eliza has also been awarded honorary degrees from a number of institutions including her alma mater, Oxford University. A legacy of her time at MI5, in 2011 she was chosen to give the prestigious BBC Reith Lectures, alongside the, then Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Eliza spoke about terrorism and the intelligence response to it - in a series of lectures entitled ‘Securing Freedom’. She is a passionate and inspiring speaker, and now regularly lectures on leadership. Eliza’s skills, influence and experience of security and global health issues have also now brought her to Co-Presidency of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House where she continues to inspire governments and society towards a more secure, just and prosperous world.
Although – and understandably so – details of Eliza’s personal life are closely guarded, rumour has it that she is an accomplished shepherd and ovine midwife, when not juggling her formidable schedule of other responsibilities. And even less known are her artistic talents - as maker of biographic collages, which she fashions with characteristic insight and generosity, as treasured mementos, for friends and retiring colleagues.