Alison first worked as a reporter for the Harlow Star weekly newspaper before going to Leeds University where she was editor of Leeds Student. She was then a trainee at the Evening Argus in Brighton before joining Connors News Agency and Woman magazine. She came to Trinity Mirror (now Reach) in 1998 as a feature writer on the Sunday People magazine. She moved to become Features Editor on the Daily Mirror in 2001. In 2016 she was made Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Trinity Mirror papers and in 2018 was named as the Editor of the Daily Mirror, making her its first female editor since its very first editor in 1903. In February 2020 she was made Editor in Chief of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People. Alison has also written a weekly column in the Mirror since 2012 and in 2018 was named “Columnist of the Year” at the National Press Awards. She is chair of Reach plc’s Reaching Gender Equality group and Deputy Chair of Women In Journalism. She has three children aged between nine and 15. Alison is also a regular media commentator and has appeared on such programmes as Question Time, BBC Politics Live and ITV's This Morning.