Maddalaine Ansell is Director of Education at the British Council. Maddalaine is a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge where she studied Classics. She then studied and qualified as a solicitor practising with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and later the US law firm Sullivan and Cromwell LLP. After six years, she joined the civil service on the fast stream.
She has held a number of appointments including with the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, Home Office and BIS. She worked on the HE White Paper for the then Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, and was appointed to Deputy Director, International Knowledge and Innovation in 2011 where she was responsible for the £375 million Newton Fund. From 2015-2018 Maddalaine was chief executive of University Alliance.