Baroness Neuberger
Baroness Neuberger DBE is a member of the British House of Lords. She formerly took the Liberal Democrat whip, but resigned from the party and joined the Crossbenches in September 2011 upon becoming the full-time Senior Rabbi to the West London Synagogue.
She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and Leo Baeck College, London. She became a rabbi in 1977, and served the South London Liberal Synagogue for twelve years, before going to the King's Fund Institute as a Visiting Fellow. She was at Harvard Medical School in 1991-1992, Chairman of Camden & Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust from 1993 until 1997 and then Chief Executive of the King's Fund, an independent health charity until 2004. She has been a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Medical Research Council and the General Medical Council, a Trustee of the Runnymede Trust and the Imperial War Museum (until 2006). She was also a Trustee of the British Council, and remains a Trustee of Jewish Care and of the Booker Prize Foundation as well as a founding trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust, in memory of her parents, and of New Philanthropy Capital, a charity that assesses the outcomes of charities' work. She chaired the independent Commission on the Future of Volunteering from 2006 – 2008, is President of Liberal Judaism, and was the Prime Minister's Champion for Volunteering from 2007 until June 2009.
She is now chair of the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board and also chairs the One Housing Group. She was appointed by the Lord Chancellor to chair an Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity from February 2009 to March 2010. She formerly took the Liberal Democrat whip, but resigned from the party and joined the Crossbenches in September 2011 upon becoming the full-time Senior Rabbi to the West London Synagogue.
She is the author of several books on Judaism, women, healthcare ethics and on caring for dying people. Her latest book 'Not Dead Yet – a Manifesto for old age' was published by Harper Collins in May 2008.
She was created a Life Peer in June 2004 (Liberal Democrat) and was Bloomberg Professor of Divinity at Harvard University for the Spring Semester 2006.
In her spare time she likes swimming, gardening, family life, opera and Irish life.
