Full Name
Matthew Mitchell
Job Title
Director, Global Sales E-commerce
Company
FedEx
Speaker Bio
"Businesswoman, broadcaster, author and activist Mary Portas OBE made her name creating
change. Aged 30, she became a board member at Harvey Nichols before founding her own
retail consultancy. Mary has since worked with some of the biggest names in global retail.
Her BBC series – Mary Queen of Shops – premiered in 2007 and she has presented on television and radio for the BBC and Channel 4 ever since. In 2009, she partnered with Save
The Children to reinvent charity shops. To date, the 26 Mary’s Living & Giving shops nationwide have raised more than £30 million for charity. She also conducted a review of the
future for high streets for the British government in 2011.
As co-chair of the Better Business Act, Mary heads a coalition of businesses calling for a
change in the law to ensure UK companies align their interests with those of wider society and the environment.
In addition to presenting two series of Mary Portas: On Style for BBC Radio 4, Mary is also a
podcaster – in her latest series Beautiful Misfits she interviews fellow changemakers taking
the imaginative leap to create a better world.
Most recently, Mary took on the government with Kevin McCloud & Hugh Fearnley-
Whittingstall in The Great Climate Fight on CH4. Mary made the King’s New Year Honours list, being awarded an OBE for her services to business, broadcasting and charity.
Mary is already the author of five books: her debut Windows: The Art of Retail Display [1999]
explored the power of visual merchandising; How to Shop with Mary, Queen of Shops [2007],
co-written to accompany her BBC series; the memoir Shop Girl [2015]; the manifesto
Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto for Change [2019], which examines how we’ll work in the
future; and Rebuild: How to Thrive in the New Kindness Economy [2021]. Her Kindness
Economy podcast also hit #1 on the business chart.
And now she has published a fifth – I Shop Therefore I am: The 90's, Harvey Nicks – and me. A no-holds-barred memoir of her early days in Harvey Nichols that takes readers inside the
Britpop-fuelled fashion world of the 1990s, from headline-grabbing displays and supermodel-led photo shoots to high-stakes boardroom battles and the alpha-male management teams she had to win over. It’s the story of how a twenty- something Mary turned a dowdy department store into a cultural icon."
change. Aged 30, she became a board member at Harvey Nichols before founding her own
retail consultancy. Mary has since worked with some of the biggest names in global retail.
Her BBC series – Mary Queen of Shops – premiered in 2007 and she has presented on television and radio for the BBC and Channel 4 ever since. In 2009, she partnered with Save
The Children to reinvent charity shops. To date, the 26 Mary’s Living & Giving shops nationwide have raised more than £30 million for charity. She also conducted a review of the
future for high streets for the British government in 2011.
As co-chair of the Better Business Act, Mary heads a coalition of businesses calling for a
change in the law to ensure UK companies align their interests with those of wider society and the environment.
In addition to presenting two series of Mary Portas: On Style for BBC Radio 4, Mary is also a
podcaster – in her latest series Beautiful Misfits she interviews fellow changemakers taking
the imaginative leap to create a better world.
Most recently, Mary took on the government with Kevin McCloud & Hugh Fearnley-
Whittingstall in The Great Climate Fight on CH4. Mary made the King’s New Year Honours list, being awarded an OBE for her services to business, broadcasting and charity.
Mary is already the author of five books: her debut Windows: The Art of Retail Display [1999]
explored the power of visual merchandising; How to Shop with Mary, Queen of Shops [2007],
co-written to accompany her BBC series; the memoir Shop Girl [2015]; the manifesto
Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto for Change [2019], which examines how we’ll work in the
future; and Rebuild: How to Thrive in the New Kindness Economy [2021]. Her Kindness
Economy podcast also hit #1 on the business chart.
And now she has published a fifth – I Shop Therefore I am: The 90's, Harvey Nicks – and me. A no-holds-barred memoir of her early days in Harvey Nichols that takes readers inside the
Britpop-fuelled fashion world of the 1990s, from headline-grabbing displays and supermodel-led photo shoots to high-stakes boardroom battles and the alpha-male management teams she had to win over. It’s the story of how a twenty- something Mary turned a dowdy department store into a cultural icon."
Speaking At
