Martha Lane Fox
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Martha Lane Fox (born 10 February 1973) is a British e-commerce business woman, charity trustee, board member of Channel 4 and mydeco.com [1] and non-executive Director of Marks & Spencer . She co-founded Lastminute.com, an icon of the dotcom boom of the early 2000s.
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[edit] Personal life
Born in Oxford, she is the daughter of the British historian Robin Lane Fox. Her great-grandfather on her mother's side was Charles Paget, 6th Marquess of Anglesey.[2]
She was educated at Oxford High School, Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where she read ancient and modern history.[3]
In May 2004 she was severely injured in a car accident in the tourist resort of Essaouira, near Marrakesh in Morocco. She spent a year in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford having metal inserts and bone grafts.[3]
[edit] Business career
Martha Lane Fox, together with Brent Hoberman, founded Lastminute.com in 1998, an online travel and gift business that generated great publicity, becoming an icon of the UK internet boom and floating at the peak of the dot-com bubble but managing to survive its subsequent burst.[3]
On 20 November 2003, it was announced that she would step down as managing director of Lastminute.com, though she remains a non-executive director. She was replaced by Ian McCaig, Lastminute's chief operating officer.
On 28 December 2003, it was revealed by The Sunday Telegraph that Martha Lane Fox would become "right hand woman" of Galen Weston, owner of Selfridges, and take over the day-to-day running of the business.
In 2005 she launched her private karaoke company Lucky Voice with a club in London's Soho.[3]
In 2007 she joined the board of Marks & Spencer as a non-executive director.[3]
In 2009 she was announced as a keynote speaker at the Chartered Management Institute's national conference. On 16 June, it was announced that she will become the UK's Digital Champion for two years to spearhead moves to make the UK more tech savvy.[4]
[edit] Charity work
Lane Fox is a strong and vocal advocate of progressive causes including human rights, womens' rights and social justice.
She founded Antigone in 2007, a grant-making trust to support charities based in the UK.
She is a trustee & patron of Reprieve, a legal action charity, which recently made the news because of its involvement in the release of UK resident Binyam Mohammed from Guantanomo Bay and continues to fight for justice on his behalf [3]
She is a patron of Camfed, dedicated to fighting poverty and HIV/AIDS in rural Africa by educating girls.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ http://mydeco.com/the-magazine/style/articles/press%20release_2008_02_04technicalrelease
- ^ Martha Lane Fox: The bionic vixen By Neil Norman, The Independent, Sunday, 27 May 2007
- ^ a b c d e f This is Money - 22 May 2007, Martha Lane Fox joins M&S
- ^ BBC News article on Digital Britain
- ^ Camfed on BBC Radio 4 this Christmas Day at Camfed
[edit] External links
- A BBC News interview with Martha Lane Fox
- A BBC News article about her stepping down as MD
- Girl, Interrupted – ES magazine interview post accident and recovery, archived at the Camfed website
