Birthday honours award for high-flyer with Helmsdale connections
Kristen McLeod, who has strong Helmsdale connections, has been awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to Life Sciences.
The Director for the Office for Life Sciences in London, Kristen is the daughter of Helmsdale native and retired teacher Bobby McLeod and his wife Avril.
Her grandfather was the late James McLeod who owned A R McLeod & Sons Ironmongers of Helmsdale.
The family have a second home in the village and Kristen has been a patron of Helmsdale Games for some years – her father was games’ chieftain in 2009.
Married with two children, Kristen lives near Wimbledon.
After graduating in 2005 from University College London, with a first class honours degree in history and French, she joined the Civil Service as a policy adviser with the Department of Health.
In 2009 she became a senior policy adviser with the Prime Minister’s strategy unit at the Cabinet Office and two years later was promoted to deputy director of flexible resourcing and development at the Cabinet Office.
In 2011 she took on a new post as deputy director of NHS provider policy at the UK Department of Health and a year later moved to become principal private secretary to the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt. She has been director of the Office for Life Sciences, a joint government unit, since 2017.
