Ramsay was educated at the University of Glasgow and the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva.

Whilst at Glasgow she served as President of the Students' Representative Council, wrote for the then Gilmorehill Guardian, and was a member of the Dialectic Society.

She served with distinction in Stockholm and in Helsinki where, as the SIS Head of Station, she was involved in the successful exfiltration of the former KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky.

A news article states that SIS will neither confirm nor deny they ever employed Ramsay.

She was made a life peer as Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale, of Langside in the City of Glasgow on 11 October 1996.