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Dido Harding
Diana Mary "Dido" Harding, Baroness Harding of Winscombe (born November 1967) is a British businesswoman and life peer who served as chair of NHS Improvement from 2017 to 2021, and as interim chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and head of NHS Test and Trace from 2020 to 2021.
She was the chief executive of the TalkTalk Group from 2010 to 2017. A member of the Conservative Party, Harding is married to John Penrose, a Conservative former member of Parliament, and is a friend of former Prime Minister David Cameron. Harding was appointed as a member of the House of Lords by Cameron in 2014. She holds a board position at the Jockey Club, which is responsible for several major horse-racing events, including the Cheltenham Festival.
In May 2020, Harding was appointed by Health Secretary Matt Hancock to head NHS Test and Trace, established to track and help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in England. In August 2020, after it was announced that Public Health England was to be abolished, Harding was also appointed interim chief executive of the new National Institute for Health Protection, later renamed the UK Health Security Agency; she left that role soon after the new agency was established in April 2021.
Harding is the daughter of John Harding, 2nd Baron Harding of Petherton, and the granddaughter of Field Marshal John Harding, 1st Baron Harding of Petherton, who commanded the Desert Rats for a few months in World War II.
Raised on the family pig farm in Dorset, she was educated from 1978 to 1985 at St Antony's Leweston, then an all-girl private Catholic school. She then graduated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, from Magdalen College, Oxford, where she studied under Vernon Bogdanor and alongside David Cameron, and then studied at Harvard Business School, gaining an MBA.
Upon graduating in 1988 she joined the management consultancy McKinsey & Company. In 1995 she was appointed marketing director of Thomas Cook before moving to Manpower and Kingfisher in 1998 and Woolworths in 1999. From 2000 to 2004 she was "commercial director for value added foods" and then "international support director" at Tesco. In 2007 she moved to Sainsbury's as convenience store director, and took a seat on the operating board in 2008.
Harding was named the first CEO of TalkTalk in 2010, when Carphone Warehouse split its telecoms business from its retail operation. She was appointed as a non-executive director on The Court of The Bank of England in July 2014. She has also served on the boards of British Land and Cheltenham Racecourse.
In October 2015, TalkTalk experienced a cyber-attack, during which personal and banking details of up to four million customers, not all of which were encrypted, were thought to have been accessed. City A.M. described her responses as "naive", noting that early on, when asked if the affected customer data was encrypted or not, she replied: "The awful truth is that I don't know". Her inflexible line on termination fees was also criticised. Marketing ran a headline, "TalkTalk boss Dido Harding's utter ignorance is a lesson to us all". The Evening Standard noted that "It has been a tough week for TalkTalk boss Dido Harding, facing complaints from customers and calls for her head". The company admitted the incident had cost it £60 million and lost it 95,000 customers. Fining the company £400,000, the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham blamed a "failure to implement the most basic cyber security measures."
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Dido Harding
Diana Mary "Dido" Harding, Baroness Harding of Winscombe (born November 1967) is a British businesswoman and life peer who served as chair of NHS Improvement from 2017 to 2021, and as interim chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and head of NHS Test and Trace from 2020 to 2021.
She was the chief executive of the TalkTalk Group from 2010 to 2017. A member of the Conservative Party, Harding is married to John Penrose, a Conservative former member of Parliament, and is a friend of former Prime Minister David Cameron. Harding was appointed as a member of the House of Lords by Cameron in 2014. She holds a board position at the Jockey Club, which is responsible for several major horse-racing events, including the Cheltenham Festival.
In May 2020, Harding was appointed by Health Secretary Matt Hancock to head NHS Test and Trace, established to track and help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in England. In August 2020, after it was announced that Public Health England was to be abolished, Harding was also appointed interim chief executive of the new National Institute for Health Protection, later renamed the UK Health Security Agency; she left that role soon after the new agency was established in April 2021.
Harding is the daughter of John Harding, 2nd Baron Harding of Petherton, and the granddaughter of Field Marshal John Harding, 1st Baron Harding of Petherton, who commanded the Desert Rats for a few months in World War II.
Raised on the family pig farm in Dorset, she was educated from 1978 to 1985 at St Antony's Leweston, then an all-girl private Catholic school. She then graduated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, from Magdalen College, Oxford, where she studied under Vernon Bogdanor and alongside David Cameron, and then studied at Harvard Business School, gaining an MBA.
Upon graduating in 1988 she joined the management consultancy McKinsey & Company. In 1995 she was appointed marketing director of Thomas Cook before moving to Manpower and Kingfisher in 1998 and Woolworths in 1999. From 2000 to 2004 she was "commercial director for value added foods" and then "international support director" at Tesco. In 2007 she moved to Sainsbury's as convenience store director, and took a seat on the operating board in 2008.
Harding was named the first CEO of TalkTalk in 2010, when Carphone Warehouse split its telecoms business from its retail operation. She was appointed as a non-executive director on The Court of The Bank of England in July 2014. She has also served on the boards of British Land and Cheltenham Racecourse.
In October 2015, TalkTalk experienced a cyber-attack, during which personal and banking details of up to four million customers, not all of which were encrypted, were thought to have been accessed. City A.M. described her responses as "naive", noting that early on, when asked if the affected customer data was encrypted or not, she replied: "The awful truth is that I don't know". Her inflexible line on termination fees was also criticised. Marketing ran a headline, "TalkTalk boss Dido Harding's utter ignorance is a lesson to us all". The Evening Standard noted that "It has been a tough week for TalkTalk boss Dido Harding, facing complaints from customers and calls for her head". The company admitted the incident had cost it £60 million and lost it 95,000 customers. Fining the company £400,000, the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham blamed a "failure to implement the most basic cyber security measures."
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