Tessa Blackstone, Baroness Blackstone

Tessa Ann Vosper Blackstone, Baroness Blackstone,PC (born 1942) is an English politician and university administrator.

Blackstone was educated at Ware Grammar School for Girls and the London School of Economics, where she gained a doctorate. Her academic career began at the former Enfield College (now Middlesex University) before she went on to become a lecturer at the LSE and Professor of Educational Administration at the University of London Institute of Education. She has also held research fellowships at the Centre for Studies in Public Policy and the Policy Studies Institute.

Her father was the chief fire officer for Hertfordshire, her mother an actor and model for the House of Worth in Paris.

Although once known as the 'Red Baroness' despite her particular interests and personal manner, she has served as chairman of the ballet board of the Royal Opera House, the Fabian Society, and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), and has sat on the governing bodies of numerous other organisations.

Blackstone was Deputy Education Officer of the Inner London Education Authority (1983–86). She has also worked as a policy adviser in the Cabinet Office. As a member of Jim Callaghan's Downing Street thinktank, she upset the Foreign Office by criticizing diplomats' lavish lifestyles.

She headed Birkbeck College, University of London, for a decade as Master (from 1987 to 1997) until her appointment to the new Labour government in 1997. She has been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation.

...
Wikipedia