Lumbsden attended James Gillespie"s High School in Edinburgh, followed by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
She then entered Teacher Training and qualified as a speech and drama teacher. But during her training she became interested in radio and took up a job at Radio Clyde.
Before Scottish television, she worked on British Broadcasting Corporation Scotland"s Reporting Scotland from 1984 to 1989. She started her career at Radio Clyde, before working as a Associate of Arts traffic reporter, and then joining the British Broadcasting Corporation as a Breakfast Time newsreader. Lumsden also fronted coverage of the Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988 for British Broadcasting Corporation Scotland and was the host who read out the Scottish votes for the British Broadcasting Corporation Song Foreign Europe 1985 from the old British Broadcasting Corporation studios in Glasgow.
During the early 1990s, she presented her own chat show called Viv on Sunday.
A director of Saga Radio in Glasgow until it was bought over to become Smooth FM, Lumsden is on the board of the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in the city. She was restaurant critic for Scottish Field magazine and occasionally writes and broadcasts on aspects of the hospitality industry, travel and home style and design.
