She played in the Youth String Orchestra of Scotland and planned on a career in music until a maths teacher told her that would be "a shocking waste of a good brain.

Macgregor eliminated the regular admission fee, which increased visitation sixfold over the next decade as well as donations and revenues from the gift shop.

The pressure this put on the museum's physical plant was eased by an addition to the former government office building on Circular Quay that housed it which nearly doubled its space[5] and allowed visitation to reach over a million by 2018.

[6] From 2016 to 2019 Macgregor served as President of the Board of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art for a three-year term.

[8] In March 2021 she announced that she would resign from the MCA, which she had helped weather the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic,[9] effective October 2021, to return to Scotland and spend more time with her family.