The job of British High Commissioner to Zambia is shared by two people, Ms Carolyn Davidson and her husband, Mr Tom Carter.  Both are career diplomats.  This is the first time that the British government has posted two diplomats to share a Head of Mission job.  

The couple arrived in Zambia at the end of August 2008 and presented their credentials to the (then) Acting President of Zambia, Mr Rupiah Banda, on 24 September.  They share the job by working for 4 months each, on a rotational basis, so only one of them is High Commissioner at any one time.  Carolyn Davidson took first turn at the job of High Commissioner, and worked until the end of December 2008. Mr Tom Carter was in the post from 1 January to 30 April 2009 and took over again on 1 September 2009.  Ms Carolyn Davidson was in the post from 1 May to 31 August 2009. The current High Commissioner is Mr Tom Carter.

Tom was born in 1953.  He attended the Norwich School and then read modern languages at the University of Kent at Canterbury.  He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1976, and worked at the British Embassies in Paris and Bogota, before going to the UK Mission to the UN in New York in 1986.  After a second spell in London, he was posted as First Secretary to the British Embassy in Bonn (where he met his future wife, Carolyn).  After a further spell in London, where the couple married in 1997, Tom was posted to Bangkok as Head of Political Section at the British Embassy.  In 2004 the couple moved to Central Europe, and shared the job of Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Bratislava (Slovakia), taking it in turns to work in four-month stints.  In 2008 they were posted to Lusaka as High Commissioners, and are the FCO’s first job-sharing Heads of Mission.

Carolyn was born in 1964 and went to Manchester High School before reading German and French at Bristol University.  She joined the FCO in 1986, studied Japanese, and was posted to the British Embassy in Tokyo in 1988.  After a stage at the European Commission in Brussels, Carolyn was posted to the British Embassy in Bonn (where she met Tom).  She returned to the FCO in 1995 where she worked as Assistant Private Secretary to the Minister for Europe.  The couple married in 1997.  Carolyn moved to Bangkok with Tom in 1999 and took maternity leave for the duration of that posting.  In 2004 the couple were posted to the British Embassy in Bratislava where they shared the job of Deputy Head of Mission until 2008.  In August 2008 they were posted to Lusaka as joint High Commissioners.  Carolyn took the first slot, and was High Commissioner from late August until the end of that year.

Mr Tom Carter will be High Commissioner from 1 Sepetmber to 31 December 2009, after which Carolyn will take over again.  They will rotate every four months.  The couple share one salary.

When they are not at work, Tom and Carolyn take it in turns to look after their two sons, Mark, aged 10, and Matthew, aged 9.  They (the parents) are also both studying for MBAs with the Open University.