Lesley attended Kingston University before starting at Beggars Banquet as the office Junior in 1988. Working her way through the A&R, Press and Video departments she left the UK in 1995 to set up The Beggars Group USA based in New York. Over 14 years spent as CEO at Beggars USA, she participated on many panels, tirelessly advocating for the concerns of Independent Labels. Along with Tom Silverman Lesley was the founder of A2IM. In 2004 Lesley took a years sabbatical to move to Vietnam to adopt her second daughter. She resigned as CEO a year later after it became apparent the adoption was going to take longer than a year.

Four years later she is back at Beggars in the London office taking on her new role as Director of Catalogue and Archive.

Working alongside such artists as Gary Numan, Bauhaus, Elastica, Basement Jaxx & The Charlatans, just to name a few, there have been multiple box sets and limited editions both physically and digitally. Recently Lesley licensed every TOTP’s performance from 1978 – 2008 from the BBC for the Arkive You Tube channel & is now working on every Peel session recorded for the label group. Aside from being a past board member of AIM, she is currently on the Board of the British Library’s “Save our Sounds”.