Britain's next ambassador to Poland has been announced as Dame Melinda Simmons, a member of Finchley Reform Synagogue and the UK’s former ambassador to Ukraine.
Simmons, who served as the UK’s woman in Kyiv from 2019 to 2023, was confirmed by the Foreign Office this afternoon.
She will take up her post in August, succeeding Anna Clunes, who is set to transfer to another diplomatic appointment.
According to Simmons’ curriculum vitae, she has been immersed in full-time Polish language training since 2024.
Before she took up her post in Kyiv, Simmons also undertook one year of full-time language training in Ukrainian with the Foreign Office.
All British ambassadors have the option of adding one additional year to their standard three-year term in office. After just three weeks in Kyiv, Simmons asked to extend her stay.
While in Ukraine, she emphasised she had gone "out of [her] way" to understand the nation's Jewish history.
She said: "Wherever I travelled I told my staff I wanted to visit the synagogue and the killing field... I built a really tragic picture for myself."
She stepped down from her “awesome and extraordinary” post in Ukraine at the conclusion of her four-year term in 2023, having been in the country during Russia’s full-scale invasion.
That same year, she reflected on her time in Ukraine in an article for the Reform Judaism Pesach newsletter, saying she was proud to be part of the effort against Russian aggression.
"I’m proud to see these heroes, civilian defenders of their country, reaching out to people in their society and helping them feel they can rebuild their lives. That is what will be in my mind, this Passover," Simmons wrote.
Born in London’s East End and brought up in Ilford, Simmons read French and German at Exeter University.
She holds a master's degree in European politics and, as well as French, German, Ukrainian and Polish, she previously studied modern Hebrew, Spanish, Dutch and Russian.
Early in her career, she worked in international sales and for an NGO specialising in conflict prevention and resolution.
In the civil service, she has spent time in South Africa and the Middle East and for the National Security Secretariat at the Cabinet Office, setting up and running a cross-government fund focused on the prevention and resolution of violent conflict, before transferring to the Foreign Office.
She was head of the Conflict Department in the Foreign Office and campaigned for justice for crimes of sexual violence against women and girls in war-torn countries and later served as director of the National Security Secretariat’s Joint Funds Unit.
Following her post in Ukraine, she was an honorary professor at the School of Slavonic and Eastern Europe Studies at University College London.
She was appointed Dame in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to British foreign policy.
