Mary Portas

Mary Portas is an English retail consultant and broadcaster, known for her retail and businessrelated television shows, and her appointment by David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, to lead a review into the future of Britains high streets.

Portas was born into a large Irish family in a small endofterrace in Windsor Road in North Watford. She went to Holy Rood Catholic Junior School and then St Joan of Arc Catholic School in Rickmansworth. Her mother died of meningitis when Portas was aged 16, and her father, a sales director of Brooke Bond, the tea manufacturer, died of a heart attack two years later forcing Portas, aged 18, to turn down a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in order to look after her younger brother.

Source: Wikipedia