Louise Sinclair graduated from Napier University in 1990 and, during her studies and for a period thereafter, she worked for the Swiss nuclear waste management programme in a mostly technical capacity. Subsequently she spent three years working in the banking sector followed by a 12-year period as an actuarial analyst, firstly in Switzerland (5 years with the Zürich Insurance Group, Zürich) and then in the UK (7 years with Scottish Widows, Edinburgh). The work carried out during this period included the management and development of databases and models used to perform various actuarial calculations such as mathematical reserves and asset/liability modelling, and risk and project management.

She co-founded Safety Assessment Management (Switzerland) in 2009, a two-person company with a client base consisting mainly of national waste management programmes and international bodies, for which she works as a consultant and financial manager. Duties to date have included involvement in cost estimation studies, including the development of associated software tools to help to determine how best to manage and design such processes, involvement in requirements management analysis and acting as the database manager for Posiva’s - the Finnish nuclear waste management organisation - Safety Assessment database (SAdb), including helping to design, develop and manage this system - such as, for example, to ensure that the associated data go through a secure, rigorous and transparent data management process - providing customer training and support and producing associated manuals and technical documentation.