Horsham Conservative Women's Organisation (CWO) are holding a FREE online event on Thursday 13 May at 6:00pm. The guest speaker will be Gillian Keegan MP. Gillian is the Member of Parliament for Chichester who will be undertaking a virtual talk for our Horsham Conservative Association.
Can you please ensure you attend and invite any friends, family, neighbours or colleagues to attend? This is part of our Conservative Women's Organisation now headed up by Tahli Boscawen.
Gillian will be talking about her life as an MP, a Mum, and why more women should become involved in politics.
Gillian was first elected in June 2017 and re-elected in 2019. Since becoming an MP Gillian has occupied several positions within government. She was elected to the Public Accounts Select Committee in September 2017. In December 2018, Gillian stepped down from the committee as she was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Her Majesty’s Treasury serving the Ministerial portfolio.
Gillian was then later promoted to serve as the principal PPS at the Ministry of Defence serving the Secretary of State. Several months later she was elevated again to serve as the PPS to the Home Secretary, a position she held until August 2019. Most recently she served as the PPS to Matt Hancock at the Department for Health and Social Care.
In February 2020, Gillian was elevated to Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Education where she is the Minister responsible for Apprenticeships and Skills.
Gillian is currently serving as the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills and is married to Michael with two stepsons.
Gillian was born in Leigh, Lancashire, went to primary school in Yorkshire. She started work as an apprentice at Delco Electronics, a subsidiary of General Motors in Kirkby aged 16, so a little ironic she is now Minister for this area. Whilst learning about the manufacturing industry she was sponsored to study a degree in Business Studies at Liverpool John Moores University.
For almost 30 years that followed she worked and lived abroad, working in the manufacturing, banking and IT industries.
She was appointed Chief Marketing Officer for a global company in the travel technology sector, prior to that she was responsible for global customer sales and account management, based in Madrid for eight years. In 2010 Gillian spent a year studying a Sloan Fellowship master’s degree at London Business School primarily to update her knowledge on digital technology and to develop her strategy and leadership skills.
A varied background that should make for an interesting and inspiring talk for us all, as you don’t have to have aspirations to become a politician to influence change for the better and to benefit future generations.
She is not alone in Sussex as we boast five more Members of Parliament. Caroline Ansell was elected in Eastbourne in 2019 winning the seat from the Lib Dems; in Hastings and Rye, Sally-Ann Hart was also newly elected in 2019; Maria Caudwell retained Lewes in that election while in Mid Sussex, Mims Davies took over from Sir Nicholas Soames; and finally also in 2019, Nus Ghani, born in 1972 in Pakistan, was elected in 2019 to represent Wealden.
Women are still underrepresented in politics, parliaments and public life. Young people have a very important part to play in promoting more women in public and political life, so this talk may be of interest to any studying politics.