Jo Valentine, Baroness Valentine

File:Baroness Jo Valentine crop.jpg

Jo Valentine in 2011

Josephine Clare Valentine, Baroness Valentine, known as Jo Valentine (born 8 December 1958) is a Crossbench member of the British House of Lords.

Valentine was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she read Maths and Philosophy.

Valentine sits on the boards of several organisations in the United Kingdom. She is chief executive of London First, and was on the National Lottery Commission until September 2005. In 2005 she was recommended by the House of Lords Appointments Commission to be made a life peer, and was created Baroness Valentine, of Putney in the London Borough of Wandsworth on 10 October 2005. She is a Trustee of London Housing Association the Peabody Trust.

Baroness Valentine joined London First in 1997 as Managing Director, becoming Chief Executive in 2003. Her role centres on representing to national and local government the most pressing issues affecting London’s leading businesses. London First’s mission is to make London the best place in the world in which to do business. Its members include leading retailers, investment banks and property companies.

Prior to London First, Jo Valentine worked in corporate finance at Barings Bank, where she became the first female manager. In 1988, on secondment from Barings, she established and ran ‘The Blackburn Partnership’ a public-private partnership to regenerate Blackburn, Lancashire. In 1990 she joined The BOC Group to head the corporate finance and planning function, leaving in 1995 to establish the Central London Partnership (CLP).

Baroness Valentine is an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh’s College Oxford and has an Honorary Doctorate in Law from Roehampton University. she was a board member of the New West End Company and of inward investment agency Think London and was a trustee of Teach First. She is married, to venture capitalist and author Simon Acland, son of former British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Antony Acland. They have two daughters, Eloise Acland and Isabel Acland.

External links

• Announcement of her introduction at the House of Lords House of Lords minutes of proceedings, 25 October 2005
• London First