Date: 2009-02-23 Category: Events

Women Shaping the Future of Wales

Biography, Baroness Professor Ilora Finlay of Llandaff

Cardiff University, Velindre NHS Trust & Marie Curie Cancer Care

Professor Ilora Finlay, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, is a Welsh doctor, professor of palliative medicine, at Cardiff University School of Medicine and a consultant at the Velindre cancer centre in Cardiff. She became a consultant in palliative medicine in 1987, and established the Marie Curie Hospice in Penarth in the same year.

A former Vice Dean of the university’s School of Medicine, Ilora Finlay was made a life peer as Baroness Finlay of Llandaff in 2001. In 2003 she proposed a bill to ban smoking in public buildings in Wales, and three years later this became law and was implemented in the principality. A cross-bench member of the House of Lords she was named as 2008 Peer of the Year at the Second Dods and Scottish Widows Women in Public Life Awards for her work as "a tireless champion".

In 2006, Ilora Finlay became President of the Royal Society of Medicine, a post she held until 2008.