A former acting chief executive of Brighton and Hove City Council who has since become a senior civil servant has been awarded a top honour by the King.
Catherine Vaughan, 50, from Hove, has been made a Companion of the Bath, one rank below a dame in the Order of the Bath.
She studied PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) at Keble College, Oxford, before spending five years as an accountant with PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers).
From there she joined the council in 2001 as assistant director of finance and won promotion to director of finance three years later.
She spent more than 13 years with the council as well as more than four years as the chief finance officer of the South Downs National Park Authority before moving to the Land Registry.
From her role there as director of finance and business services, she became one of the top civil servants at the Department for International Trade as chief operating officer.
After five years there, she became director general for finance at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) just over two years ago.
While a student at Oxford, she earned a university blue for netball and more recently became a volunteer coach at 5Ways Netball, for 8 to 19-year-olds, based at Cardinal Newman Catholic School, in Hove.
She also previously served as a non-executive director of England Netball.
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