Claudia was born in Leicester. One of four children, she was brought up by her Nevisian parents (from the twin islands of St Kitts and Nevis), who were part of the Windrush Generation. Her father was an engineer’s hand (employed at the Wadkin manufacturing company on Green Lane, LE5), and her mother was a dressmaker. 

Claudia joined her first Trade Union at age 16, the Community and Youth Workers Union, which is now part of Unite the Union. While studying full-time, she worked as a silver service waitress and part-time youth worker and fought to defend the rights of casual and seasonal workers. 

 Claudia is passionate about communities, children, and young people. Her passion for confronting poverty, inequalities, workers’ rights, and injustice is unquestionable and drives her passion daily. 

Claudia attended Gateway Sixth Form College in Leicester and then studied Mathematics, Statistics, and Computers at University before embarking on a Social Science programme and then a Master’s in Race and Ethnic Relations. In Nottingham, she became a ‘principal training officer’ and led a team delivering the Home Office Joint Investigation of Child Sexual Abuse Training and new legislation on the Children Act 1989. She worked closely with both the police and ‘social services’. 

Claudia has run several children’s charities and centres for work with young people and communities. She specialised in detached youth and community work, engaging and working with young people in non-conventional settings and street work. She developed her work and career in Leicester, Coventry, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds, Reading, Bath, North-East Somerset and London leading, developing and running a range of initiatives, centres and change organisations in the public and charitable sector. 

She has run several equality rights organisations, including the Bath and North East Somerset Race Equality Council, located in the City of Bath and the Westminster Race Equality Council, which was located at Piccadilly Circus London. Arguably at the time, the most central race equality council in the country, giving her unparalleled access to some of the most powerful and largest institutions in both the public and private sector including the Metropolitan Police Service and New Scotland Yard. 

She founded with others Operation Trident to tackle the disproportionate impact of gun murders on Black communities. She became the Chair of its Independent Advisory Group and thus the public voice of its campaign, to tackle the men of violence using firearms to protect a crack cocaine industry, disproportionately impacting black communities. 

In 2000, she became a full-time advisor to the first directly elected Mayor of London and provided political leadership for his programme on arts, culture, sports, and tourism, including the transformation of Trafalgar Square from a traffic-dominated’ pigeon-infected’ environment to a place for people. She led the early discussions resulting in the 2012 Olympics. 

She became a non-executive director of the Children’s Society and National Energy Action. 

She also became an independent advisor to the National Chief Police Council and the National Ballistics Intelligence Service, tackling the Criminal Use of Firearms. She was also an advisor to the Football Association and sat on its equality board. 

In 2010, she was elected a local Councillor in the London Borough of Islington and appointed its Executive Member in 2015, leading the transformation programme for Environment and Transport. With a very busy portfolio, she pioneered Bunhill Heat and Power (locally generated more efficient heat) and Angelic Energy to tackle the big six energy providers.

 She led the transformation of its traffic-dominated streets and gyratories (Old Street, Archway and Highbury Corner) to tackle air pollution, and she pioneered streets for children and places for people. Her remit of work was far-reaching and included all things nature, tackling the climate and ecological emergency. 

As a political activist, she held a wide variety of party positions, including on the National Executive Committee, the ruling body of the Labour Party, where she was elected twice (in 2016 and again in 2018) with member votes in excess of 90,000 each time and became the chair of its Disputes Committee. 

In 2019, she was elected as a member of parliament for Leicester East. 

Claudia has a passion for all things Carnival and became the chair of the Reading Caribbean Carnival and was on the Committee of the Yaa Asantewaa Arts—a centre for carnival arts and more. She also provided leadership and support of the Notting Hill Carnival on behalf of the Mayor of London while at City Hall.