Barbara Young spent the first 20 years of her career in public relations and in health services management. Latterly she managed a range of health districts in London. She was Chairman then President of the Institute of Health Services Management from 1986 to 1988, and a King’s Fund International Fellow in 1985-86 and 1990-1991.
After 20 years in health care, she switched to an environmental career and has held posts as Chief Executive of the Environment Agency and Chairman of English Nature. From 1990 to 1998, she held the post of Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). She is active in the conservation and environment voluntary sector as President of the British Trust for Ornithology and of the Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Peterborough Wildlife Trust, and as Vice-President of RSPB, Birdlife International, Plantlife, Flora and Fauna International and The South Georgia Heritage Trust. She sits on the government’s Climate Change Adaptation Committee.
She has also served as Vice-Chairman of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), as a Board member of AWG plc, the water and infrastructure company, and as Chairman of the Care Quality Commission, the regulator for quality in health and social care.
Barbara Young is a Life Peer in the House of Lords as Baroness Young of Old Scone, and is Chancellor of Cranfield University.
She has a number of honorary positions as Patron of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, an Honorary Member of the RICS, Honorary Fellow of the Geologists Association and an Honorary fellow of the Linnean Society. She also holds a number of Honorary Degrees and is an Honorary Fellow Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, Eminent Fellow of IAgrE, CIWEM Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Waste Management (CIWM)
She has had an interest in Assisted Dying for 20 years.
