ALL the world’s a stage for Baroness Shriti Vadera, who started her role as chair of Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in August 2021, becoming the first woman and the first person of colour to assume the position at the theatre company.
A former minister under Gordon Brown, known for her role in helping the then prime minister weather the 2008 financial crisis, she was also the first woman to head a major British bank, when he served as the chair of Santander UK from March 2015 to October 2020. She has been the chair of the insurance giant Prudential plc since January 2021.
Vadera has over 35 years of experience spanning public and private sectors, in the UK and internationally, and a reputation for getting things done. She started her career as an investment banker for 14 years at investment bank UBS Warburg with a particular focus on emerging market, and debt relief and restructuring.
She joined the HM Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1999, leading on policy areas for business, productivity, private finance, and international development issues. She became a close adviser to the then chancellor Brown, and when he succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister in June 2007, she was created a life peer as Baroness Vadera, of Holland Park in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, and appointed to the government.
She served as a minister jointly in the Cabinet Office and in the International Development and Business Departments from 2007-2009, leading the UK government’s response to the financial crisis. The Daily Telegraph at the time described her as “the woman Gordon Brown trusts more than any other in his government.” She was a key architect of its pioneering bank recapitalisation and funding plan in 2008 and helped design the outcomes of the G20 London Summit in 2009, when the grouping of 19 countries and the EU declared itself the primary venue for international economic and financial cooperation.
Vadera stepped down as a minister in 2009 to take up a new role advising the G20 from Downing Street. She advised the G20 from 2009 to 2010 and prior to joining Santander in 2015, she has been working as a strategic adviser to governments, banks and investors on the Eurozone crisis, banking sector, debt restructuring and markets.
She has always believed in diversity as it reduces the risk of “group think”, she once commented. The RSC described her as a ‘highly experienced, inclusive leader, committed to our vision, mission and values, and with a proven track record of leading an organisation through significant strategic transformation,’ while demonstrating ‘a deep appreciation for the power of theatre, education and culture to enrich society, and a proven commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion.’
Commenting at the time of her appointment as the RSC chair, Vadera said: “I grew up in Uganda and India, in a traditional community where expectations of the development of girls were narrow and strict. I read and imagined Shakespeare before I saw it performed and it opened up a different world, giving me the courage to aspire to possibilities that transformed my life.
“I am passionate about the arts and the impact they can have on the lives of individuals and communities. I have long been a supporter of the RSC, a company rooted in history and which is modern, innovative and dynamic, uniquely national but also global. It is a company that is dedicated to the excellence of its art while being acutely aware of its wider roles and responsibilities.
“As the RSC emerges from one of its most difficult years, responding to the global pandemic, I am excited to be supporting and championing the RSC as its new chair and to look to the future. It is a joy and an honour.”
Lady Vadera, who was the top Hammer Award winner at the GG2 Leadership Awards in 2017, said the poverty in India and a former nanny’s experience of not being able to invest her hard-earned money in her child’s education (her husband was flittering it away on himself) also made her think about the privilege she enjoyed as the daughter of wealthy tea planters in Uganda.
Born in Uganda in 1962 to Indian Gujarati parents, her family, however, has to flee the country following Idi Amin’s expulsion of Ugandan Asians. They initially found refuge in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1972, and eventually moved to Northwood in north-west London. Vadera attended Northwood College, an all-girls private school, before reading Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Somerville College, Oxford.
She also has extensive boardroom experience, serving as non-executive director of the global pharmaceuticals group Astrazeneca from 2011 to 2018, and the international mining company BHP Billiton from 2010 to 2020. She was a trustee of Oxfam from 2000 to 2005 and served as the chair of the European Financial Services chairwoman’s advisory committee from 2016 to 2019.
She currently serves as a senior adviser of foreign affairs think tank Chatham House and sits on the board of the Institute of International Finance, the trade group for the global financial services industry.
