Virginia is Head of Global Disaster Risk Reduction where she works on knowledge, partnerships, capacity development and implementation for the 2015 UN Landmark agreements of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (link), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (link) and other WHO and UN agreements.

She  is currently  as co-chair of the recently developed WHO Thematic Platform Health and Disaster Risk Management Research Group (link), member of the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) scientific committee, co-sponsored by the International Science Council (link) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and Co-Chair of IRDR’s Disaster Loss Data (DATA). She is an Executive Committee member of CODATA (Committee on Data of the International Council for Science) and a member of the  CODATA’s Linked Open Data for Global Disaster Risk Research (link) and a member the UNSDN Data for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS). She has been a member and then vice-chair of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) from 2008-2017.

In 2011 she was appointed as Head of Extreme Events and Health Protection, Public Health England and developed evidence based information and advice on flooding, heat, cold, volcanic ash, and other extreme weather and natural hazards events. She is a Visiting/Honorary Professor at several universities including University College London (2013), MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, Imperial College and King’s College, London (2004) and at the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health  (2017) and has published widely.