Baroness Valerie Amos has more than three decades of experience in international politics and in both the local and national levels of British politics. Amos was the first black woman and second black person to serve in the House of Lords as part of the UK Labour Party. Amos sat in the House of Lords for four years under former prime minister Tony Blair until she left in 2007. During the majority of this time she held the influential positions of Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council.

Amos later became the high commissioner to Australia and is now working as the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United Nations. In her role as Under-Secretary General, Amos is responsible for overseeing all emergencies requiring humanitarian assistance, including the responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the immense floods that covered Pakistan later that year, and the triple-disaster that hit Japan at Fukushima in 2011. In 2012 Amos visited Syria to help raise awareness of the extent of the people’s suffering caught in the uprising and civil war.

Amos continues to shape and lead the UN’s response to global catastrophes, be they man-made or of natural causes. In Dū’s Global Leaders Faculty, she looks back on her career and the methods she used to bring together and work with people in all areas of government and in all areas of the world.