Baroness Neuberger DBE was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and Leo Baeck College, London. She became a rabbi in 1977, and served the South London Liberal Synagogue for twelve years, before going to the King’s Fund Institute as a Visiting Fellow. She was at Harvard Medical School in 1991-1992, Chairman of Camden & Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust from 1993 until 1997 and then Chief Executive of the King’s Fund, an independent health charity until 2004. She has been a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life , the Medical Research Council and the General Medical Council, a Trustee of the Runnymede Trust and the Imperial War Museum (until 2006). She was also a Trustee of the British Council and of Jewish Care and remains a Trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation as well as a founding trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust, in memory of her parents. Until recently she chaired the Commission on the Future of Volunteering, is President of Liberal Judaism, and last year was appointed the Prime Minister’s Champion for Volunteering.

She is the author of several books on Judaism, women, healthcare ethics and on caring for dying people, and her book The Moral State We’re In, was published in March 2005. Her latest book Not Dead Yet: A Manifesto for Old Age was published by Harper Collins in May 2008.

She was created a Life Peer in June 2004 (Liberal Democrat) and was Bloomberg Professor of Divinity at Harvard University for the Spring Semester 2006.

In her spare time she likes swimming, gardening, family life, opera and Irish life.

Photo credit: Derek Tamea