Dame Valerie Amos was the first ever Black woman member of the Cabinet and the second Black person to be appointed after former MP Paul Boateng. She is currently the Leader of the House of Lords - only the third woman in history to done so. 
Born in Guyana, she studied at the Universities of Warwick, Birmingham and East Anglia. She worked in equal opportunities, training and management services in local government across London and was chief executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission 1989-94.
In the House of Lords, she was a co-opted member of the Select Committee on European Communities Sub-Committee. She was appointed a Government Whip in the House of Lords in July 1998. In addition to her role as a spokesperson on International Development - she also spoke on Social Security and Women's Issues. She was created a life peer in August 1997. She was made Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2001and joined the Cabinet as International Development Secretary in May 2003. She became Leader of the House of Lords and President of the Council in October of that same year and has survived many cabinet re-shuffles.
She has also been involved at the Runnymede Trust, the Institute of Public Policy Research, University College London Hospitals Trust, Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), Chair of the Afiya Trust, a director of Hampstead Theatre and Chair of the Board of Governors of the Royal College of Nursing Institute.
She was born in 1954.