Sarah Jane Brown

Sarah Jane Macaulay was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire on 31 October 1963. Her mother Pauline was a teacher and her father Iain worked for publisher Longman. Macaulay spent her infancy in Fife, before her family moved to Tanzania—where her mother was to operate a school—when she was two years old. When she was eight, her parents separated. Each remarried; her mother, stepfather, she, and her two younger brothers, Sean and Bruce, resettled in North London.

Sarah's relationship with Gordon Brown started after sharing a flight from London to Scotland for the Scottish Labour Party conference in 1994. The relationship was kept secret until June 1997, when the News of the World published a picture of them together at a restaurant in London. They were married on 3 August 2000 in Brown's hometown of North Queensferry, Fife.

Upon leaving university, she worked at the brand consultancy Wolff Olins. When she was thirty, she founded the public relations firm Hobsbawm Macaulay, in partnership with an old school friend, Julia Hobsbawm. Their clients included the New Statesman (owned by Geoffrey Robinson), The Labour Party and trade unions. In 2000, she married Gordon Brown, and in October 2001 left Hobsbawm Macaulay after finding out she was pregnant with her first child.

On 28 December 2001, she gave birth prematurely to a baby daughter, Jennifer Jane, who died at ten days old. Gordon spoke of Sarah's bravery after their daughter's death.

In 2002, Brown founded the charity Theirworld – originally known as PiggyBankKids – which began as a research fund to tackle complications in pregnancy, and in 2004 the charity founded the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh. The laboratory's work is notable for its unified obstetric and neonatal approach to complications in pregnancy and childbirth, with a particular focus on preterm births.

On 17 October 2003, she gave birth to their second child and first son, John. Another son, James Fraser, arrived on 17 July 2006 and was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis that November.

Gordon Brown became Prime Minister on 27 June 2007, following the resignation of Tony Blair. As wife of the Prime Minister, Sarah Brown was generally viewed favourably. The Guardian noted her public image, describing her as "a truly modern public figure: talkative, empathetic, informal but infinitely connected, ubiquitous as any celebrity, an avid exploiter of new digital media, an expert assembler of charitable and political coalitions", noting "her positive profile could be the best thing Labour has got going for it with the election looming." The Telegraph noted that " It is hard to find people with a bad word to say about Mrs Brown."

In 2008 Brown became global patron of The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, the grassroots led maternal health advocacy movement, and co-founded the Maternal Mortality Campaign. Her leadership on the issue has been recognised with her appointment as a member of the External Advisory Group of the world-leading Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and as an adjunct professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.

In 2009, Brown gave the keynote speech at the World Health Organization's 62nd World Health Assembly, alongside United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In her speech she asked "where is the M in MCH?' [maternal and child health]" in an echo of Allan Rosenfield's landmark Lancet article of 1985, highlighting that the numbers of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth were still the same approximately 20 years later.

Brown, with Bience Gawanas, was also co-chair of the leadership group on maternal and newborn mortality, launched in September 2009. Jens Stoltenberg, then Prime Minister of Norway, said "We welcome and support the establishment of this important group. Every minute a mother dies in pregnancy or childbirth... [those] women need a strong voice that will bring attention to their plight and push for the support they need."

According to Anthony Seldon and Guy Lodge, the authors of a book on Gordon's tenure as Prime Minister, Sarah brought stability to both Gordon and his office, and was "a forceful voice in encouraging him to stay on until the very end". That end came following the 2010 General Election, which resulted in the first hung parliament since 1974. The Conservative Party led by David Cameron won the most seats, and on 11 May 2010 formed a government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats after her husband's attempts to keep Labour in power failed.

Brown published a memoir of her role as the Prime Minister's spouse, entitled Behind the Black Door, through Ebury Press in 2011.

Theirworld, which was launched in early 2013 through the A World at School digital movement, also has a strong focus on global education. As well as the #UpForSchool petition, it also organised the first ever "youth takeover" of the United Nations in July 2013, and has campaigned on the provision of education to children effected by conflict and disaster, particularly including refugees of the Syria crisis in Lebanon.

In 2014, Brown helped launch A World at School's #UpForSchool petition – a global campaign started by A World at School's Global Youth Ambassadors – at a youth rally in New York City, alongside Graça Machel, Avaaz founder Ricken Patel, #BringBackOurGirls campaigner Hadiza Bela Usman, CNN anchor Isha Sesay, UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown, and messages of support from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and actor Rainn Wilson. The petition aims to hold world leaders to account for the promise of universal primary education made in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG2).

Throughout her campaigning, Brown has used social media to promote the causes of education and maternal health, and has been named on various Twitter and social media 'most influential' lists, including "The eight most influential women tweeters" by Forbes magazine, and in 2014, Brown was reported to be the second "most powerful Briton" on Twitter by The Independent.

On 16 November 2015, Brown launched the Theirworld Birth Cohort project, a £1.5million study aimed at improving the health of women and their children who are born prematurely, at Edinburgh University as part of the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory. The project will track the development of 400 babies, most of whom are born before 32 weeks, following them through to adulthood, tracking educational attainment to help identify the causes and consequences of brain injury at birth and help speed the development of new treatments that could improve the health of prematurely born babies.

The petition mobilised support and campaigning from a wide variety of organisations and individuals. 2015 Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi headlined the London launch event in November 2015. Other notable supporters and participants include his fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, Malala Yousafzai, Justin Bieber, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Laura Carmichael, the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Augustin Matata Ponyo, Education International (the world teacher's union), BRAC, World Vision, Walk Free, Muslim Aid, Avaaz.org, Rovio (who created a special Angry Birds level in support of the petition), and Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi in Pakistan.

In February 2015, it was announced that Sarah Brown would be competing in a second Comic Relief special edition of The Great British Bake Off television show, with The Guardian describing the line up as a "cause for celebration".