Alumnae who shine…

Still active in her field, Brenda (Class of 1936) is regarded as one of the leading neuroscientists of her generation. She is the Dorothy J. Killam Professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital and a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University in Canada. Many consider her a founder in the field of clinical neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. Her career spans more nearly 75 years and her contributions have revolutionised our understanding of how brain structures govern different learning, memory and speech functions. A winner of countless awards, her work and contribution to many significant discoveries have paved the way in her field and are still studied by psychologists and students around the world, including Withington’s A Level Psychology students.

Brenda also demonstrates a desire to support and enable others to learn. In 2007 she set up the Brenda Milner Foundation to support a part of the education system that she felt was underfunded, post-doctoral studies. The foundation makes it possible for students who go beyond a PhD to carry on working to become established in a university department. In 2019, a Montreal school for children with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities and associated disorders was named after her – l’École régionale Brenda-Milner. She is a true inspiration to Withington students, past and present.

Christine is one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation. She studied Physics at Oxford before pursuing her interest in music and studying singing at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Christine’s operatic appearances have taken her to the Metropolitan Opera, New York; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the Opéra national de Paris; Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich; Deutsche Oper, Berlin; Madrid’s Teatro Real; the Opernhaus Zürich and the Glyndebourne and Salzburg Festivals.

Her wide ranging repertoire includes the roles of Brangäne Tristan und Isolde and Erda Das Rheingold; Judith Duke Bluebeard’s Castle; the title role in Carmen; Concepcion L’heure espagnole; Giulietta Les contes d’Hoffmann; Marguerite La damnation de Faust; Hänsel Hänsel und Gretel; the title roles in Gloriana and The Rape of Lucretia; Dorabella Così fan tutte and Donna Elvira Don Giovanni; Penelope Il Ritorno d’Ulisse and Irene Theodora, Ruggiero Alcina and the title role in Ariodante. She created the roles of Miranda and Blanca in the world premieres of Adès’ The Tempest and The Exterminating Angel, and Ariadne in Birtwistle’s The Minotaur.

Christine’s most recent season includes Muse in Les contes d’Hoffmann for the Royal Opera and Phaedra in Deborah Warner’s staging of Britten’s cantata in its Linbury Theatre, La Zia Principessa Suor Angelica for the English National Opera and Ježibaba Rusalka for the Bayerische Staatsoper.

Christine also has a very busy concert career, appearing throughout the UK, Europe, North America and at the BBC Proms and Edinburgh International and Aldeburgh Festivals working with conductors that include Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Mark Elder, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Andrew Davis, Edward Gardner, Fabio Luisi, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Denise is the Championship Referee of Wimbledon. She is the first woman in the world to hold the position at any of the ‘Grand Slam’ championships.

After Withington, Denise embarked on a career as a professional tennis player, winning the British Under 21 title in 1981. She has played for and captained England on several occasions and played on the professional tennis circuit for ten years, including Wimbledon in 1986.

Retiring from professional tennis in 1990, Denise started gaining the necessary qualifications and reputation needed to work professionally as a tennis referee. In 2006 she attained the highest qualification awarded by the ITF (International Tennis Federation), that of Gold Badge Referee, a position currently held by only 13 women out of 60 Gold Badge Holders. During her career she has officiated at the Olympic Games in Athens and has been designated as Referee of a variety of international events in 43 different countries.

In 2021 she was appointed Referee of the pre-Wimbledon event at the Queen’s Club – the Cinch Championships. This was the first time that a woman had been appointed as Referee of a Men’s Professional Tour event anywhere in the world. The same year she was awarded Referee of the Year by the Association of British Tennis Officials. She took over as Championship Referee at Wimbledon in 2024, the first woman to do so in 125 years.

In addition to her officiating, Denise also runs her own consultancy business, working with high-tech companies who provide scores and statistics and advanced TV graphics, as well as national governing sports bodies.

Having studied print fashion at London’s Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. Sarah worked for Alexander McQueen, a British designer known for his ground-breaking clothes, catwalk shows, and precise tailoring.

In 2010, Sarah became the Creative Director of the entire brand. During her 13 year tenure, she continued to produce critically acclaimed collections establishing herself as an accomplished designer with both artisanal and technical expertise. She also established an extensive programme supporting young creatives.

Sarah was revealed as the designer of HRH The Princess of Wales’s dress for her wedding to HRH the Prince of Wales in April 2011.  She also designed the maid of honour’s dress worn by Catherine’s sister, Pippa, as well as a second dress worn by the bride. The designs were widely praised.

Sarah was named Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council in the same year, and in June 2012, she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to the British fashion industry. She has also won The Walpole Award for British Luxury Design Talent, Harper’s Bazaar Woman of the Year Award and the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) International Award.

In September 2024, it was announced that Sarah had been appointed as the new Creative Director of Givenchy, responsible for the creative direction of all of Givenchy’s Women’s and Men’s collections.

Lizzy Burden is an anchor and UK correspondent on Bloomberg TV. She is also a non-executive Director, Creative Access, widening representation in the creative industries.

Lizzy has interviewed major politicians and business leaders including the UK Chancellor, Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Shadow Chancellor and FTSE 100 CEOs, in addition to Nobel laureate economists and Bank of England policymakers.

From Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, the BOE, European Central Bank, European Commission and Élysée Palace, she has reported on monetary policy decisions, the careers of multiple UK prime ministers, the death of Elizabeth II, Brexit, the US-China trade war, and the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Passionate about diversity, she is a non-executive director at Creative Access, which works to widen representation in the creative industries. In 2017, it secured her first opportunity in journalism, an internship at The Times which led to the graduate scheme. Lizzy went on to write about economics for The Telegraph and Bloomberg News before moving into broadcasting full-time.

She read history at the University of Cambridge, alongside which she was a model, walking the fashion weeks of New York, London, Milan and Paris.

Her love of current affairs began at Withington. She won the Royal Economic Society’s Young Economist of the Year Award in 2008 and co-founded WiMUN (Withington Model United Nations).

Olivia is also the Chief Programmes Officer of WONDER Foundation, a charity which works globally and in the UK to empower women and girls through education.

Having spent a year teaching at a school in Kenya, she studied Geography at UCL, with a focus on International Development, education and the environment. During this time, she volunteered in Brixton and then led the Youth Service at the Baytree Centre, working with migrant and marginalised girls. She set up the IntoSchool project in response to the increasing numbers of migrant teenage girls who were unable to get a school place in London, an issue that Olivia says remains today. Having developed a passion for advocacy and policy, she worked in the European Parliament and then for NGOs (Non-Government Organisations) in North London.

Eventually, this work crystallised into WONDER Foundation, established formally in 2012. Since this time, WONDER has reached over 120,000 women and girls directly, providing education and mentoring to help them to lift themselves out of poverty through partnering with excellent, locally led projects. This has included training the first 13 international standard midwives in DR Congo, supporting 6,000 Ukrainian refugees in Poland, enabling thousands of young women to take up vocational training thus leading them into good jobs, as well as advocating for their needs and amplifying their voices wherever possible.

Olivia says, ‘I want to acknowledge the many brilliant and supportive people who have worked alongside me and encouraged me. No one achieves anything alone, and we are strongest when we work with others. I love this work: it’s a constant opportunity to be reminded of how many people really want to be of service to others.’

Joanna is the Academy Award®-winning filmmaker behind Violet Films, a London-based production company. Violet Films’ work finds the political in the personal, tackling global stories with an intimate lens. With over 100 award nominations and over 65 wins, Violet’s work includes the Oscar®-winning Netflix Original The White Helmets; BAFTA and Oscar®-nominated Virunga; the Oscar®-nominated The Edge of Democray; The Heart of Invictus docu-series for Netflix in association with Archewell Productions; We Dare to Dream, the second film from Academy Award®-nominated director Waad al-Kateab and Executive Produced by Angelina Jolie & John Legend; and Disney’s Oscar® Nominated Documentary Short, Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó. Joanna continues to produce a highly anticipated slate of projects, including the scripted adaption of Virunga for Netflix, written by Academy Award®️-winner Barry Jenkins, Protest and Progress for Paramount Plus and an Untitled Music Doc for Film4 & Studio Gebbia.

Joanna studied at Cardiff University and at LSE, where she gained an MSc in Human Rights.

After leaving Withington, Sapna read Philosophy and French at Oxford University, following which she completed a professional diploma in law, and qualified at the Bar. She was called as a barrister by Lincoln’s Inn in 1999 and practised at the independent Bar in London.

In 2006, she undertook a diploma in international commercial arbitration at Queen Mary University, London, and pivoted to specialise in international commercial disputes. She practised at the international law firm Clyde & Co in Dubai from 2006 to 2011, and in Singapore from 2011 to 2021. In 2020, she was appointed Queen’s Counsel (now King’s Counsel).

From 2021 to 2024, Sapna practised as International Legal Counsel at the Attorney-General’s Chambers of Singapore. In September 2024, she was appointed a (part-time) Judge of Appeal of the Courts of the Dubai International Financial Centre, alongside which she practises as an independent advocate, arbitrator and mediator.

Anna studied for an MA in Chemistry at Oxford University before deciding on a career in business and finance.

She has worked in five different industries and been based in seven countries. This includes Diageo, where she held roles including Chief Financial Officer, Asia Pacific and subsequently, Group Strategy Director. After four years as CFO for Johnson Matthey, Anna became Chief Financial Officer of the London Stock Exchange Group. In 2022, Anna was named CFO of the Year in the Women in Finance Awards (Diversity Q), an award given to a CFO that has delivered real value with tangible business results to a company in the past 18 months . In 2024, she joined Nestlé, which owns brands that reach consumers in 189 countries around the world.

She is also passionate about making the workplace an inclusive environment. She was part of a group of female CFOs who came together to create the mentoring programme, NXT Gen Women in Finance., identifying, mentoring and promoting female upcoming in finance with the aim of seeing many more women becoming successes. She was named in the INvolve HERoes Top 100 Executive Role Models 2022, designed to showcase leaders who are championing women in business and driving change for gender diversity in the workplace.

Louise completed her PhD in Materials Chemistry at the University of Manchester. She then worked in the Civil Service before setting up the Futures Innovation Team at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence and, subsequently, the Data Innovation team at Experian. She is currently Deputy Director, Data & Insights for the Government Digital Service, which includes working with the Cabinet Office. Her role involves responsibility for the Government’s digital output across a wide range of tech areas.

She is a Director and Research Lead for the non-profit organisation, Women in Identity, which seeks to promote diversity and inclusion in the digital identity sector and a director for the Akama Fund, a charity that develops higher education scholarships.

Louise is currently a governor of Withington Girls’ School.