Elaine initially worked for the Clydesdale Bank but after a year moved to Shell UK Oil where she worked in the Retail Estates and Equipment department for seven years as a Marketing Assistant dealing with such things as Maintenance Contracts, capital and revenue expenditure, budgets and preparing and keeping records of the User Agreements for the Company Owned Sites. She left Shell in 1982 to start a new career as a mother!

When her youngest daughter started school Elaine returned to work at Hermitage Academy, Helensburgh taking charge of the administration of the "Compact" scheme, when the funding for this ended she worked for a local businessman for 4 years with a varied remit including keeping farm accounts as well as secretarial work. She was also the Secretary to the charity Patrons of the National Galleries of Scotland for three years. 

Elaine took up the position of NYCoS Administrator in January 2000, initially she looked after all the administration for the Children's Choirs (now referred to as Area Choirs) but her remit rapidly expanded to include preparing all the NYCoS publications and programmes. In addition to this, in 2002 and 2003 Elaine was the administrator for the National Boys Choir. She also tends to be the first call for IT problems in the office! With increasing work load for both Area Choirs administration and publications Elaine decided, with agreement from NYCoS, to concentrate on the publications side of the business and a new Area Choir Administrator was appointed in May 2006.

Elaine was the Hon Secretary of the local branch of the Pony Club for a number of years finally leaving the committee in November 2003. She is Company Secretary for her local Community Trust and member of the committee for the local village newspaper – the Dumpling Times.

Leisure time interests include folk singing, photography, computing, bird/wildlife interest and reading.