Dr Virginia Bolton is Cofounder of the Progress Educational Trust (PET), having founded the charity together with Professor Marcus Pembrey and Viscount Janric Craigavon, and is a Consultant Embryologist at at Guy's Hospital's Assisted Conception Unit. She originally studied Zoology at the University of Oxford, and subsequently acquired a PhD from the University of Cambridge for her research into the molecular biology of mouse embryogenesis. She then pursued postdoctoral research at Cambridge, with support from the Medical Research Council. This led to her work with Professor Peter Braude, establishing the time at which embryonic genes first become active during early human development.