Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho
|
The Right Honourable The Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho CBE |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Martha Lane Fox 10 February 1973 Oxford, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Crossbencher |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, Life Peer |
Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho,CBE (born 10 February 1973) is a British businesswoman, philanthropist, and public servant.
Lane Fox co-founded Lastminute.com in the dotcom boom of the early 2000s and has subsequently served on public service digital projects. She is a board member of Twitter, mydeco.com, Marks & Spencer, and chairs the board of the digital skills charity, Go ON UK and was on the board of Channel 4 from 2007 to 2011. Lane Fox joined the House of Lords as a crossbencher on 26 March 2013, becoming its youngest female member. Lane Fox was also appointed as Chancellor of the Open University as of 12 March 2014.
Born in Oxford, Lane Fox is the daughter of the academic and gardening writer Robin Lane Fox. She was educated at Oxford High School, an all-girls independent school in Oxford, and at Westminster School, an all-boys public school in London with a mixed-sex sixth form. She read ancient and modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.
After university she showed interest in acting and prison governorship but joined the consulting firm Spectrum, involved in IT and media companies. Her first project was for British Telecom called "What is the Internet?". Here, she met Brent Hoberman, a fellow employee.
In 1998, Lane Fox and Hoberman founded Lastminute.com, an online travel and gift business that generated great publicity, floating at the peak of the dot-com bubble. On 20 November 2003, it was announced that she would step down as managing director of Lastminute.com. The company survived the dotcom crash to be bought for £577m in 2005, by Sabre Holdings. Lane Fox's personal share holding at the time the company was bought was worth £13 million.
...
Wikipedia