Baroness Caroline Cox was created a Life Peer in 1982 and has been Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords in the UK since 1985. She was Founder Chancellor of Bournemouth University from 1991-2001 and is Vice President of the Royal College of Nursing. Her international humanitarian work includes serving as non-executive director of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, trustee of MERLIN (Medical Emergency Relief International), and the Siberian Medical University and Chief Executive of HART (Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust). Baroness Cox has been honored with the Commander Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and the Wilberforce Award for her humanitarian work. She has also been awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Honorary Doctorates by universities in the UK, the US, the Russian Federation and Armenia. Baroness Cox's humanitarian work has taken her on several missions to conflict zones, including Armenia, the Sudan, Nigeria, the Burmese jungles and Indonesia. She recently visited North Korea, to help promote parliamentary initiatives and medical programs and has been instrumental in helping change policies for orphaned and abandoned children in the Former Soviet Union.