Chi Onwurah
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Chi Onwurah MP |
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Onwurah in 2013
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| Shadow Minister for Industrial Strategy | |
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Assumed office 10 October 2016 |
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| Leader | Jeremy Corbyn |
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Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne Central |
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Assumed office 6 May 2010 |
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| Preceded by | Jim Cousins |
| Majority | 12,673 (36.1%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
12 April 1965 Wallsend, England |
| Political party | Labour |
| Alma mater |
Imperial College London University of Manchester |
| Website | Official website |
Chinyelu Susan "Chi" Onwurah (born 12 April 1965) is a British Labour Party politician, who was elected at the 2010 general election as the Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, succeeding the previous Labour MP Jim Cousins, who had decided to step down. She is Newcastle's first black MP. She is the current Shadow Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills, as well as Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, having been appointed to both posts in September 2015.
During the depression of the 1930s, Onwurah’s maternal grandfather was a sheet metal worker in Tyneside shipyards. Her mother grew up in poverty in Garth Heads on Newcastle’s quayside. Her father, from Nigeria, was working as a dentist while he studied at Newcastle University Medical School when they met and married in the 1950s.
After Onwurah was born in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1965, her family moved to Awka, Nigeria while she was still a baby. Just two years later the Biafra War broke out bringing famine with it, forcing her mother to bring the children back to Newcastle, whilst her father stayed on in the Biafran army.
Onwurah graduated from Imperial College London in 1987 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. She worked in hardware and software development, product management, market development and strategy for a variety of mainly private sector companies in a number of different countries – Britain, France, US, Nigeria and Denmark while studying for an MBA at Manchester Business School.
Prior to becoming an MP, Onwurah was Head of Telecoms Technology at OFCOM, with a focus on broadband provision.
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