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 2024 Mary made the King’s New Year Honours list, being awarded an OBE for her services to business, broadcasting and charity.
Outside of her work in retail and business, Mary has authored 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.
In 2025 Mary’s fifth book, I Shop Therefore I am: The 90's, Harvey Nicks – and me, was published. 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.
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