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About
Baroness White is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the School of Public Policy with an impressive career as a civil servant and businesswoman, having served more than 15 years in the UK public service and held leading roles at the top of large, complex organisations in both the public and private sectors. She brings with her a deep understanding of the interface between commercial decision-making, regulation, public policy and politics.
Since January 2025, Baroness White has been Senior Managing Director and Head of Global Affairs at La Caisse, based in London, where she works closely with asset class managers in the UK, Montreal, and international offices worldwide. In this role, she represents La Caisse in various markets, as well as with partners, governments, regulators, and commercial organisations. She originally joined La Caisse as Managing Director and Head of Europe.
From February 2020 to September 2024, Baroness White was the sixth Executive Chair of the John Lewis Partnership (JLP), heading the UK’s largest employee-owned business. She joined JLP after four years as Chief Executive of the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the UK’s media, telecoms, and postal regulator, from 2015–2019. Before joining Ofcom, Baroness White was Second Permanent Secretary at HM Treasury from 2013–2015, overseeing the UK’s public finances and supervising a review of the Treasury’s management response to the international financial crisis of 2007–2008.
Baroness White trained as an economist and studied at Cambridge University and University College London (UCL) before starting a brilliant career working in public service. She has dedicated much of her career to reforming UK public services and the welfare system, serving as: lead adviser on welfare reform to Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997–1999); First Secretary at the UK Embassy in Washington, DC, advising on US welfare reform, the US economy, and banking (1995–1997); Director of Welfare to Work at the Department for Work and Pensions (2005–2007); and Chief Executive of the Office of Criminal Justice Reform at the Ministry of Justice, coordinating courts, prisons, and police (2009–2011). She also has a wealth of experience working in international development through roles at the World Bank in Washington, DC, where her work focused on poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and as Director General at the UK Department for International Development (DFID), where she led on the reconstruction of Libya after the 2011 civil war in a UK government taskforce.
Baroness White has held various non-executive roles and is currently Non-Executive Chair of Frontier Economics. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for her public service, is a crossbench (non-politically aligned) Member of the House of Lords, was named the UK’s most influential Black person by Powerlist in 2022, and was ranked 75th on Fortune’s list of Most Powerful Women in 2023.
Expertise
Commercial decision-making, regulation, public policy, international development