Anna Coote is an English writer, editor, policy analyst and policy advocate who is Principal Fellow at the New Economics Foundation. She has been a lifelong political activist in support of civil rights, women's rights, social justice and sustainable development.

Anna Mary Coote was born on 1 April 1947 to John Coote and Silvia Syson. Her father, then a captain in the Royal Navy, was frequently reposted, both around the UK and for two years in Washington D.C., so Anna and her sisters were educated at several different schools.

From 1965 she read Modern History and Politics at Edinburgh University where she edited the student newspaper, The Student. Coote played an important role in bringing about student reforms and the resignation of Malcolm Muggeridge, the Rector of the university, in 1968. The Students' Representative Council had passed a motion calling on the Student Health Service to provide the contraceptive Pill to female students on request and to provide free information on contraception. The next issue of The Student called on Muggeridge to support the SRC's demand. Muggeridge attacked the motion for promoting promiscuity and announced his resignation from the pulpit of St Giles' Cathedral in January 1968.

Coote left Edinburgh early with an Ordinary degree to work as a journalist at The Observer newspaper from 1968 to 1971. In 1971 she became staff writer on Ink, an alternative weekly newspaper founded by Richard Neville. At Ink, she covered the six-week-long Oz trial, in which Neville and his co-editors of the British underground magazine Oz were prosecuted on three charges, including obscenity. She then became a freelance journalist, contributing to the Evening Standard, the Guardian, the Sunday Times and other newspapes and magazines.

This period saw her involvement in civil rights, the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) and the emerging women's movement. She co-founded Women's Report, a weekly feminist newspaper and co-authored two Penguin guides, to Civil Liberty in 1972, (ISBN 9780140522914) and Women's Rights in 1974.(ISBN 9780140523058)

Coote was appointed Deputy Editor of the New Statesman from 1978 to 1982. In 1982 she published with Beatrix Campbell a history of women's liberation in the 1970s, an account of its achievements and failures and a strategy for the future.

In 1982 Coote and Tess Gill came to prominence in the El Vino case. They were the first to successfully challenge the policy of the El Vino wine bar in Fleet Street, London, of not serving women at the bar and instead requiring them to order by table service in a back room. Their legal action against El Vino was eventually heard in the Court of Appeal and upheld in November 1982. It was described by The Daily Telegraph as "one of the most celebrated and publicised sex discrimination proceedings" under the Sex Discrimination Act. In 2017 Coote and Gill attended a celebration at El Vino, now under new owners, for the 35th anniversary of the case.

Coote then turned to current affairs television as Editor and Producer of Diverse Productions from 1982 to 1986. Diverse was set up to pioneer programming on politics and current affairs to the new Channel 4 based on tough journalistic standards. Coote was producer and presenter on current affairs programmes The Friday Alternative and Diverse Reports. In 1987 she worked as columnist on the short-lived left-wing tabloid newspaper, News on Sunday.