Name Margaret Baroness | ||
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Born 16 December 1957 (age 65), Saltcoats, United Kingdom Parents Edward Garland, Susan Garland Awards Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Nationality British Political party Labour, Crossbench Spouse(s) Christopher Derek Ford, David Arthur Bolger Children 2 Alma mater University of Glasgow (MA (Hons) MPhil) Similar Tony Blair, Katharine Ford, Jenny Chapman | ||
Margaret Anne Ford, Baroness Ford of Cunninghame (born 16 December 1957) is a British Labour peer and Chair of Scottish Television Holdings PLC and Barchester Healthcare.
Contents
- Plenary 16th March wmv
- Early Life And Education
- Life
- Early Career
- Career
- Volunteerism
- Honors And Recognition
- Advocacy
- Family Life
- References
Plenary 16th March .wmv
Early Life And Education
Ford was born in December 1957 in Saltcoats, Ayrshire. She received her education at St. Michael's Academy, Kilwinning. She also studied at Glasgow University and graduated MA (Hons) in 1979 and M.Phil in 1984.
Life
The daughter of Edward and Susan Garland, she married firstly Christopher Derek Ford in 1982, with whom she had two children, Michael and Katharine. After a divorce in 1990, she married secondly David Arthur Bolger later the same year.
Ford was awarded a life peerage as Baroness Ford, of Cunninghame in North Ayrshire on 5 June 2006.
On 7 April 2009 Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell announced Ford's appointment to chair the newly created London Legacy Development Corporation, known officially as the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC). In 2011, she was included in the Times newspaper Sport Power 100, entering at number 26. In 2012 she was controversially replaced as chairman of the LLDC by Daniel Moylan, a Conservative.
She is also a former Chief Executive of Good Practice Limited, a non-executive director of Serco, managing director (Social Infrastructure and Development) of the Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets and Chairman of Irvine Bay Urban Regeneration Company. She is also the President of the UK charity Epilepsy Action.
Early Career
Ford’s first job was as a Saturday girl in a local bakery. She began her formal career with Cunninghame District Council. This role led her to London, where she solidified her business career and earned her place on several executive boards and, eventually, her formal title as Baroness Ford of Cunninghame.
Career
Margaret Ford was appointed by Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, as a Labour Peer in 2006. However, she resigned in 2009. As of 2023, she serves as a Crossbench peer in the House of Lords.
Ford has decades of experience as a non-executive director and chair of several companies and government bodies, such as STV plc, Grainger plc, May Gurney Integrated Service plc, and Barchester Healthcare Ltd.
She has chaired the English Partnerships (also known as Homes England), Lothian Health Board, and the Olympic Park Legacy Company (also known as LLDC) and had executive roles in BIFU, Price Waterhouse, and Scottish Homes. Ford also acted as Independent Non-Executive Director of Taylor Wimpey plc and Managing Director of Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets.
Baroness Ford served as the CEO and founder of Eglinton Management Center, which was sold in 2000. She then formed Good Practice but it was later sold in 2015 to Emerald Publishing. She was also a non-executive Director of Ofgem, Thus plc, the Scottish Prison Service, Segro plc, Serco plc, and Taylor Wimpey plc.
Ford was a Member of the Olympic Board of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games and helped in the regeneration of East London around the Olympic Park.
In 2020, she became Deloitte’s Audit Governance Board Chair. Additionally, she became an Independent Non-Executive on the Deloitte UK Oversight Board and North and South Europe Board.
Also in 2020, Baroness Ford left her position as Lendlease’s non-executive director. The firm said Baroness’s Ford decision to leave was influenced by the challenges associated with the coronavirus pandemic and a “greatly expanded board-meeting schedule”. It was announced that she would continue to serve as an independent adviser to the firm.
As of 2023, she is a senior adviser to the Lendlease Corporation. She also chairs the Buckingham Palace Reservicing Challenge Board and the NewRiver REIT plc.
Volunteerism
Ford has been a Councillor of the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), a Trustee of the British Olympic Association, and Honorary President of Epilepsy Action Honorary since 2008. Prior to that, she was an STV Children’s Appeal Chair. She also formerly served as a Chair and Trustee of the Tennis Foundation before the foundation’s 2019 merger with the LTA.
Honors And Recognition
In 2015, Ford was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2006, Ford became a Life Peer and was granted the title Baroness Ford of Cunninghame in North Ayrshire.
In 2009, she was appointed as an honorary member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). In 2011, she was #26 in the Times’ Sport Power 100.
Ford received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) award in the 2019 Honors List for her work in business and sport. Ford also possesses honorary degrees from the University of Stirling and Napier University.
Advocacy
Ford advocates inclusion for women in leadership positions. She appointed women to the positions of CEO, CFO, and SID at Grainger, which became the first Company listed on the London Stock Exchange with an all-female leadership team.
In a 2013 article, she said that “Any chairman today who says ‘we don’t have any women on the board because we can’t find any with the appropriate experience’, frankly, is not looking very hard.”
She has said that she does not favor quotas to gain inclusivity in senior-level positions and is still looking for innovative ways to do so. She helped execute a deal with Eglinton Management Centre, an Edinburgh-based human resources consultancy, which agreed to co-sponsor a summer school for Scottish women who want to earn board positions.
In 2017, she led the first female-focused workshop at School for CEOs, a school dedicated to senior executive and boardroom training.
In a speech for International Women’s Day in 2017, she shared her perspectives on the state of female involvement in board positions:
“I would argue that, to make real progress, women must be deeply embedded at the highest level: in the key decisions around [the] allocation of resources and in critical investment decisions, at a time when some of our hard-won rights have never been under more pressure, around determining culture and behaviors.”
In 2021, she lamented, “My frustration is that, 40 years after I started my career, I think the corporate position in Scotland is still lamentably poor.”
Family Life
In 1982, Ford married Christopher Derek Ford. She had two children with him, Michael and Katharine.
In 1990, the two divorced. She then married David Arthur Bolger in the same year.