Rise to the top

The former head of the British MI5 Dame Stella Rimington during her appearance before the intelligence and security committee at Parliament.

Stella Rimmington Rebecca Kitteridge doesn't have a favourite Bond movie but she does have a favourite Bond: "Sean Connery, classic, he's the one and only Bond for me."

She likes John le Carre and the novels of Stella Rimmington, the former head of Britain's MI5. She has also read the essays of Eliza Manningham-Buller, another MI5 director who argued in the Reith lectures that freedom and security aren't mutually exclusive but that you must have security in order to have freedom.

When she was asked recently by a woman "What do you do?", and she replied she was the SIS director, the woman said "Oh, is that an insurance company?".

Kitteridge, who went to Upper Hutt College, wishes she had joined the SIS when she was younger.

"I think it would be a fabulous job and if only I'd thought of it when I was at university."

Instead she graduated from Victoria University and became a lawyer, later joining Crown Law where she was seconded to the Cabinet Office, advising on decision-making processes. The legal division in Foreign Affairs until 2008 was followed by a return to the Cabinet as Secretary, where she was a stickler for process.

She left to conduct the GCSB inquiry, then won the top SIS job. She is aged 48, and married with a 12-year-old daughter.