The public at large was introduced to the name of Gina Coladangelo during summer 2021, when an unclear CCTV image of her kissing then Secretary of State Matt Hancock was printed on the front page of national newspaper; the image would ultimately cost Hancock his position but make Coladangelo, a communication strategist with 20 years working behind the scenes under the radar, one of the most searched names in UK politics, though there’s much more to the woman the incident revealed than the circumstances that came to define her- here’s a brief study of the woman, the career, and life as we know it today.
Who Is Gina Coladangelo?
Gina Lucia Coladangelo was born on August 13, 1977, in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, to an Italian businessman and an English mother, before reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University and, in an unfortunate twist of fate, bumping into a student and future newspaper headline partner, Matt Hancock, then working at a student radio station side by side, unaware of the impending headline news that would link their names
Gina Coladangelo is actually a professional communicator and marketer, not a professional politician, and also not a professional public servant. She has been a familiar face for around 20 years in the charity world, for example from healthcare organisations, charities, social enterprises and public sector bodies… As she said in an interview previously, she works more from the back end to build her fame, which rarely attracts headlines without an associated political issue. She is British and, before 2021, she wasn’t famous among the public. They would only find her name appear in trade press instead of in tabloids.
Gina Coladangelo’s Career
Gina Coladangelo‘s expertise grew through a career working in strategic communications, advising trusts, the health sector, and public bodies over many years on how best to handle their communications. As a director at the PR consultancy Luther Pendragon, while at the same time serving as a managing director at NHS trusts, she gained practical insights into running these health organizations.
Her more defining appointment was the move into the Department of Health and Social Care in 2020, when the then Health Secretary Hancock employed her to work there, initially as an unpaid advisor before taking up her appointment as a non-executive director in September that year. This appointment came with a salary of approximately £15,000 per annum and allowed for up to 20 days per year, so placing her in one of the most high-pressure departments in the country in the middle of a global pandemic.
This raised concerns among political commentary in how much her appointment had been subject to scrutiny-a point which has always been denied by ministers, “following proper procedure”. That part of her government career came to an end in the same month her affair was revealed, and in the same week, her position at the DHSC was terminated, stepping down in June 2021. From then on, her career moved fully back to the private sector again.
She held the position of Marketing and Communications Director at Oliver Bonas, a UK-based retailer of lifestyle goods and fashion, working using skill sets that were typical of the course of her life before politics interfered with her career. Gina Coladangelo’s working life as the leader of communications strategies, the marketer for retailers and health consultants, always took place before 2021, and continued after it too, though her career has been largely simplified to one cycle.
What Is Known About Her Personal Life?
Before the scandal, Gina Coladangelo’s private life seemed relatively smooth-running, with 2004 seeing her marry London property lawyer Glynn Gibb. Following her previous marriage, which broke down, she remarried in 2009 the founder of Oliver Bonas, Oliver Tress, with whom she had three children; they settled in the SW London area of Wandsworth.
All changed after The Sun released the footage of Hancock and Coladangelo-who was already married to someone else-kissing one another in April 2021, in the Whitehall office. A great deal was reported at the time, including both marriages collapsing, the pair each living elsewhere in Mayfair, and Coladangelo separating from his wife Tress, and Hancock from Martha, his wife of fifteen years and the mother of his three children.
During the years since, Coladangelo and Hancock have been in a relationship. He has since given public interviews talking about their relationship, including his stint on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get me out of here! During 2022, he confessed to falling in love with Hancock and admitted that she “ruined my private life.” The two of them are still a couple at the time of writing this information, but neither has divulged exactly what their living situation is. Gina Coladangelo herself has not done many interviews about their relationship.
What Reliable Sources Confirm
This is worth distinguishing fact from tabloid, and indeed, much has arisen regarding Gina Coladangelo’s story. Various news outlets (both tabloids and broadsheets) and papers of record report it as a fact: she went to Oxford, and she came to the Department of Health in 2020, and left in June 2021. She is previously married to Oliver Tress, working in communications and the retail world.
In fact, both the COVID Inquiry and leaks of Government communications printed in the media, collectively known as the Lockdown Files, have now independently confirmed that Gina Coladangelo accompanied Hancock to professional events, such as meals with the US health minister while Hancock was Health Secretary; such questions on public money were first posed with surprise.
More vaguely settled: precisely where on the spectrum of rich this woman is. Unofficially released biographical information has tossed about some numbers between approximately one to three million dollars but has had absolutely no verifiable sources of such numbers due to Coladangelo having never opened up about her finances. Net worth claims online in specific dollar figures are all just guesses, as much as possible.
Another thing you might be interested in: some information regarding her current daily life, such as how exactly she is living with Hancock, is not officially confirmed by the sources as of writing and relies solely on old interviews and public appearances from several years ago.
Final Thoughts
Gina Coladangelo is unlikely to escape being inextricably linked to June 2021 in the public imagination; what a huge British political news story that was! But anyone focusing solely on that headline leaves out quite a substantial amount of Gina Coladangelo’s biography and, most importantly: twenty years spent working in communications, a prior professional career, a following career life, and (it would appear, for all intents and purposes) an ongoing relationship with Hancock. The best strategy for anyone researching Coladangelo seems to be an examination of facts that have actually been substantiated by facts (and reliable media reports), as opposed to those which have been recirculated to blog and biography sites.
