Irene Tordoff Fritchie

Background

Irene Tordoff Fennell, daughter of Mr and Mrs Charles Frederick Fennell, was educated at Ribston Hall Grammar School for Girls in Gloucester and has had a long career specialising in training and development.

Career

Now described as a "portfolio" worker, she holds various positions in addition to that of United Kingdom Commissioner for Public Appointments, including President of the Pennell Initiative for Women"s Health in Later Life. In the 1970s, she was one of the first full-time women"s training advisers and pioneered the training of staff in the then new Equal Opportunities Commission. She has published extensively on these topics and contributes regularly on them to programmes on television and radio.

She became Commissioner for Public Appointments in 1999.

This appointment was renewed in 2002 and 2005. She became Chairman of Nominet in 2010.

She holds a number of positions outside government. She holds an honorary Professorship in Creative Leadership at York University and is Pro-Chancellor at Southampton University, a Civil Service Commissioner and Vice-Chair of the Stroud and Swindon Building Society.

Active in a number of charities, Fritchie has been awarded honorary degrees by a number of academic institutions.

Fritchie is Chair of the 2gether National Health Service Foundation Trust in Gloucestershire, and in 2012 was appointed as the new chancellor of the University of Gloucestershire. She was widowed in 1992.

Achievements

• Fritchie became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1996 New Year On 31 May 2005 she was made a life peer as Baroness Fritchie, of Gloucester in the County of Gloucestershire, and she sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.