Ailsa Anderson Makes Royal Baby History

By Simon Perry

07/22/2013 at 04:10 PM EDT

Ailsa Anderson posts the official birth announcement

AP

Normally, she’s behind the scenes, away from the cameras. But when Ailsa Anderson crunched across the dusty pink gravel in front of Buckingham Palace in her three-inch heels to post the message that the world wanted to read today, she was thrust firmly into the royal baby limelight.

Anderson, 44, is Queen Elizabeth’s press secretary, tasked with making the final journey with the anxiously awaited birth notice (handed off by Prince William and Kate‘s press secretary Ed Perkins) and fix it on the easel for Her Majesty’s subjects (and the rest of the world) to see.

The proclamation stated that a son was born safely at 4:24 p.m. and “Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well.”

Anderson, a tall, slender mother-of-two (she’s married to a former naval officer who now works in London’s financial district), is one of three key women around the Queen. Along with assistant private secretary Samantha Cohen and dressmaker Angela Kelly, Anderson she is part of the 87-year-old monarch’s team advising her every day.

Anderson joined the palace, as an assistant press secretary, in 2001 coming from a public relations post in the U.K. government where she worked in the Cabinet Office, aiding Margaret Beckett, a senior member of the then-Labour administration, and was made press secretary to the Queen when Cohen was promoted in 2007.

“She is a smart woman – smart and sassy,” says experienced royals correspondent Judy Wade.

A popular, but feisty official, Anderson’s happy to mix with those in the mainstream media who cover the royal family. “Ailsa’s not one of those press officers who remains aloof,” Wade adds.

Living in the home counties just northwest of London, she likes to shop for clothes at the designer outlet stores at Bicester Villlage (where Kate has been known to visit) and has a nose for a good deal. “She’s great at sussing out the good bargains in sales,” says a friend.

It’s a thriftiness that would gain her praise from her boss, whose role at the pinnacle of public life in Britain is passionately supported by her press spokeswoman.

When she got her first post in the press office at Buckingham Palace, Anderson said it was a “dream job come true.”

Now, she’s living it every day. A Your Turn challenge for when the royal baby is born.