An evening with Fiona Hill and Fiona Millar

This event took place on 7 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.

A miner's daughter from County Durham who advised three US presidents on foreign affairs takes on the future of education.

Fiona Hill’s extraordinary journey from a background of limited opportunities to a stellar international career is set out in her book There Is Nothing For You Here (HarperCollins, 2023). As one of the world’s leading experts on Russia, she has advised three US presidents on foreign affairs.

She served as director for European and Russian affairs on President Trump’s National Security Council, and in senior intelligence roles for both Presidents Bush and Obama. In October and November 2019, Hill testified before Congress in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

Now, in the year that she begins her tenure as the chancellor of Durham University, Fiona Hill sets her sights on education, the meaning of ‘levelling up’ and how the UK can adapt to meet future challenges.

Fiona Hill will be in conversation with Fiona Millar

Fiona Hill is author of There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century and co-author with Clifford Gaddy of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Brookings Institution Press). She is a distinguished senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe within the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She holds the position of chancellor at Durham University, and is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Hill’s BBC Reith Lecture on Freedom from Fear was broadcast in December 2022 to an audience of over 200 million. That same month, she was awarded the Insignia of Knight First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland.

Fiona Millar is a writer, journalist and education campaigner. She trained on the Mirror Groups graduate training scheme and worked on several national newspapers before going to work as a special adviser at 10 Downing Street. In 2003 she started a monthly column for The Guardian about education, and in 2004 she presented Channel four documentary The Best for My Child. Millar’s books include By Faith and Daring. Interviews with Remarkable Woman, co-authored with Glenys Kinnock; The Secret World of the Working Mother, and The Best for My Child. Did the schools market deliver? was published in 2018 to mark the 30th anniversary of the Education Reform Act 1988.