Background
She is a daughter of James Roe and Dame Marion Roe.
politician Businessperson investment banker
She is a daughter of James Roe and Dame Marion Roe.
University of Street Andrews.
Before entering public life she was an investment banker and a director of the financial services company Citigroup. She has one younger sister. After leaving the university she took a job with South Bank Builders in Clapham.
In the 1990s she served on a panel of experts from the private sector consulted by the Conservative government in establishing the private finance initiative, and in 2004 she was the joint author of a report called "Reforming the Private Finance Initiative" published by the Centre for Policy Studies.
Married to Stephen Couttie, a fund manager, she gave up her job at Citigroup when she became the mother of twins, Genevieve and Angus, and was elected to Westminster City Council soon afterwards, in 2006. At that time she had recently recovered from cancer.
In June 2010 she stated her support for the new coalition government"s decision to cap housing benefit at £400 a week. In 2011 she took on the cabinet portfolio for Strategic Finance.
The next year she succeeded Colin Barrow as Leader of the council, beating Edward Argar for the nomination, and quickly distanced herself from a comparison with a predecessor, Dame Shirley Porter.
The same year, she took over the role of chairman of the statutory Health and Wellbeing Board for Westminster. She also sits on the London Enterprise Panel. In 2014 she was re-elected in the three-member Knightsbridge and Belgravia ward, where she topped the poll and the Conservative candidates took 79.6 per cent of the votes.
In July 2015 Roe announced that she was seeking her party"s nomination to stand as Mayor of London at the May 2016 election.
However, she was not shortlisted by the Conservatives.
Born in Hampstead and educated at the University of Street Andrews, Roe was a director of Citigroup before entering politics in 2006.
She was appointed as a governor of Imperial College London and in 2008 became the member of Westminster"s cabinet for Housing.