![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-1259134695-1024x683.jpg\")
Unlike most classmates, Romeo travelled in to school by Tube and would do homework in the lab where her mother, a biochemistry professor, worked full-time. | Pool photo by Aaron Chown\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\nUnlike most classmates, Romeo travelled in to school by Tube and would do homework in the lab where her mother, a biochemistry professor, worked full-time. Her parents kept her aware of the gender divide; while Romeo was a Brownie (Britain\u2019s junior Girl Scouts), her father refused to let her gain the \u201chouse orderly\u201d badge that involved sweeping and making tea.<\/p>\n
A fan of SoulCycle, skiing, game theory and (like Starmer) Arsenal football club, she had a brief stint in the management consultancy firm Oliver Wyman, where her husband John still works. She then joined the civil service in 2000 after seeing an advert in The Economist \u2014 her go-to publication \u2014 for an economist in the Lord Chancellor\u2019s department.<\/p>\n
One of her early roles was as the private secretary for Labour peer Charles Falconer, who served as justice secretary in the mid-2000s. \u201cIt was a period of very difficult and massive constitutional and organizational reform,\u201d he said. \u201cShe drove the reforms fearlessly, taking on every bit of the system to deliver \u2026 she took on No. 10 and the establishment of the civil service.<\/p>\n
Unlike most classmates, Romeo travelled in to school by Tube and would do homework in the lab where her mother, a biochemistry professor, worked full-time. | Pool photo by Aaron Chown\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s change you want, she is the person to have by your side. She\u2019ll take the flak remorselessly. She gives you the right advice and she will 100 percent deliver. It is a total mystery that she wasn\u2019t appointed 14 months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
There followed a steady rise through the ranks of government. She was mentored by the former Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood, who she called an \u201cinspiration\u201d after his death in 2018, and landed the job of Britain\u2019s consul general to New York in 2016 after she moved to the city with her family.<\/p>\n
Here, as a diplomat charged with promoting Britain overseas, Romeo began work on the sort of personal brand that would make most traditional civil servants shudder. She mingled with high society at parties hosted at the consul general\u2019s residence in midtown Manhattan, where those invited or celebrated included Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, fashion designer Stella McCartney and actor Joanna Lumley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike most classmates, Romeo travelled in to school by Tube and would do homework in the lab where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[158803,10864,158804,6229,130677,6871,8926,9609,141,39097,49,386,150806,420,9138,466,3714,50,424,58798,72363,224,3722,51,47,52,48,426,158,20765],"class_list":{"0":"post-435253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-antonia-romeo","9":"tag-bono","10":"tag-brandon-lewis","11":"tag-communications","12":"tag-darren-jones","13":"tag-david-beckham","14":"tag-department","15":"tag-dominic-raab","16":"tag-donald-trump","17":"tag-due-diligence","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-japan","20":"tag-jeremy-heywood","21":"tag-keir-starmer","22":"tag-lgbtq","23":"tag-liz-truss","24":"tag-media","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-peter-mandelson","27":"tag-rupert-murdoch","28":"tag-shabana-mahmood","29":"tag-social-media","30":"tag-theresa-may","31":"tag-top-news","32":"tag-top-stories","33":"tag-topnews","34":"tag-topstories","35":"tag-trade","36":"tag-united-states","37":"tag-yvette-cooper"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}