The executive behind the initiatives that have made London a global city, Baroness Jo Valentine discusses the EU referendum, the challenges of economic development and her role as a communicator with Andrew Thomas

Photographs by Jeff Leyshon

The renowned lexicographer, Samuel Johnson, famously said, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” Baroness Jo Valentine of Putney may be stepping down as the chief executive of the London lobbying organisation London First, but it’s clear from the outset that she’s not leaving London. She was born two streets away from where she now lives and certainly doesn’t come across as tired – of anything, let alone London.

“I think it’s best to quit when you’re ahead. I have put my heart and soul into the organisation, and I think if I hung around much longer there is a risk that London First could calcify,” says Valentine. “We have a new mayor and I think it is a good time for a new head to come in.”

Valentine has run London First for the past 13 years, having joined it six years previously. “It is a communications job, a marketing job,” says Valentine. “I am constantly amazed by how senior people don’t think that of their roles. Who is my audience? What do they want? What am I trying to sell to them? One’s instinct is to create something one likes oneself, and then hope that somebody buys it, and it seems to me so obvious that that’s not the way life works. If you are a chief executive of a public company you clearly need to know who your stakeholders are and you need to understand the environment in which you are operating. I think marketing and communications are a necessity. It underlines a lot of what we all do.”

As communications jobs go, running London First is a big one. Its motto is ‘To make London the best city in the world in which to do business,’ and it was established in 1992 to fill the vacuum created by the dissolution of the Greater London Council (GLC) “When the GLC went, there wasn’t anything that could convene and corral stakeholders in deciding what mattered and work out how to do something about it. London First was born out of a sort of Margaret Thatcher philosophy that if only you could put a lot of serious business people together you could sort out any problem.

In one sense I agree with that; you can get a practical cut-through which you can’t if you are stuck with politicians and academia. But what became clear to us was without a political champion for London we were never going to get the things that mattered pushed up the national political agenda. If you look at Crossrail, or the London Olympics, these wouldn’t have happened without some kind of mayoral figure.”

“If you are a chief executive of a public company you clearly need to know who your stakeholders are and you need to understand the environment in which you are operating. I think marketing and communications are
a necessity. It underlines a lot of what we all do”

Valentine worked closely with both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, showing a deeply pragmatic ability to work across the political and business spectrum. “I don’t think it matters desperately who that mayoral figure is, it just needs to be someone strong enough to say to national government ‘No, this needs to be further up your agenda,’” says Valentine.

Made baroness in 2005, Valentine took her seat amongst the cross-bench peers, further evidence of her non-partisan approach. She was recommended to the Lords because her background had a mixture of private and public policy initiatives at a senior level. Her career has spanned investment banking, industry, regeneration and the campaigning and social entrepreneur space she currently occupies.

Investment banking was her starting point. Coming down from Oxford with a love of mathematics untainted by the attainment of a first, she was attracted to investment banking as an opportunity to continue working with numbers. “I loved the deals, the acquisitions and all that stuff but of course at that time investment banking was a very gentlemanly occupation,” she says. Valentine was at Barings Bank, the world’s second oldest investment bank and perhaps the most gentlemanly of them all.

Valentine rose through the ranks, becoming the first female manager. She recalls, “I was the only female at the time. I could just go up to the men and tell them what to do, and they seemed to respond to that.”

Her career progressed, while outside the city there was a parallel world of urban riots and inner city discontent. Valentine had already developed an interest in social projects, and influenced by the kind of work conservative party grande Michael Heseltine was doing in Liverpool became determined to get involved with regeneration. Valentine had developed a network of influential people and in 1988, through her contacts, was granted a subsidised secondment, through the Barings Foundation, to establish and run the Blackburn Partnership, a public-private partnership aimed at regenerating Blackburn in Lancashire.

It was a tough start. “I was 29 years old, a posh white southerner. Blackburn was old Labour with a strong Asian minority. I was very much an amateur. I was thrown in at the deep end, and nearly got thrown out after six months,” recalls Valentine. “I think I learned more during those two years then I have ever learnt in the rest of my career.”

The term ‘partnership’ is one Valentine thinks is used too loosely. “The idea is that you put private sector people and public sector people in the same room and they are nice and jolly and good stuff happens. My experience is that it is more often the opposite. You have to be very clear what you are trying to achieve and then be very clear who are the right stakeholders.”

The project had been conceived by Business in the Community, presided at the time by Prince Charles. He had witnessed the success of regeneration partnerships in Massachusetts and wanted to pilot a similar initiative in the UK. The partnership still continues, partly as a direct result of Valentine’s success in setting the economic agenda. “I felt it was important to get stuff moving from the outset. Whether it was converting mills to offices, or tidying up some of the industrial space, I wanted to get people to feel better about Blackburn quite quickly.” These were similar initiatives she uses with London, “You need pride in your own place before you can sell it to other people.”

After her two year secondment was over she returned to London, but not to Barings. The next few years saw her commute out to the M4 corridor for a stint in industry with BOC, where she worked at head office on structuring joint venture partnership deals. It was a strange time, but in hindsight Valentine had made her career working in alien environments. “When I started in the city it was a gentleman’s club. In fact, in one of my first interviews I was told I wouldn’t get in because I was female. Then I moved up to Blackburn, where again there was a club mentality, this time a working men’s club. I then had my stint in industry, which was also all about clubs; which golf club you were a member of, have you got a bigger car then the next chap.

Those kind of status symbols. I had been brought up in a very cosmopolitan London environment so this club mentality had always been a little alien.”

After five years, she came back to London to work on a number of projects before ending up at London First. It was more natural territory for Valentine. Not least, as Valentine points out, because this was the first time she had worked in an office with an even split of men and women.

Sir Stephen O’Brien was already a familiar face; he was the CEO of Business in the Community who helped Valentine with the establishment of the Blackburn Partnership. When Valentine finished with BOC, O’Brien was running London First. When he heard that Valentine was available, he asked her to help out on a small project. “He always had various wonderful schemes he was promoting and I said to him ‘I will sort this one scheme out for you, but I am not staying.’ And the problem was that I enjoyed sorting out whatever the scheme was, that nearly 20 years later I’m still there,” she says.

In many ways Valentine leaves a different London First to the one she joined, but then she also leaves a different London. Such has been the change in London’s fortunes and in its perceptions around the world that it is almost impossible to consider it operating without a body to promote its enterprise, services and culture.

The marketing of London as a world city has been a tremendous success. While the UK’s capital wasn’t the first to think of itself as a brand (think Big Apple), it certainly has been one of the world’s most successful in recent years. London’s city-level initiative has been copied, both at an international level – including Mumbai First and Sydney First – and at a domestic level, as with the Northern Powerhouse brand in the UK. Its success has been in thinking of London from a brand marketing perspective rather than an economic one or an urban planning one. Valentine says, “The DTI [as the UKTI was then known] would have said the thing to do is attract inward investment. But we said at the time it was much more important to make sure we have the right environment first, so people want to invest in London. You know, you need to have the right product, so that people want to buy it. We probably didn’t call it this back then but we certainly were in the space of Brand London.”

London First and Valentine are regarded as world leaders in place branding, and are constantly sharing their knowledge to create a new, global, best practice. Around the world, in developed and developing countries, there is a reorganisation driving people into cities. Valentine has helped spearhead a new initiative called Global Cities Business Alliance, which is looking at how countries can face the challenges of urbanisation, implement change, share their successes and learn from their failures.

Valentine’s successes are many. Before she leaves there will, however, be one final test for her vision: the EU referendum. Just over 40% of the world’s largest 250 companies have chosen London for their European or global headquarters, with half citing access to Europe as the core reason for investing. Unsurprisingly, the Brexit decision has split London First members, but Valentine is adamant that remaining is the right decision for Britain and, more importantly, for its capital city. “Yes, there are one or two members that disagree with us, so if they want to take their bat and ball away they can. If you think Europe isn’t working, your options are to stay and influence, or take your toys out.”

London First has been a strong campaigner for a remain outcome in the EU debate. It has been a tough fight for all concerned so far and the next few weeks are likely to get even more bloody.

It is, she feels, the right time to pass the baton on to her successor. She is also open minded about her next role, “I’m 57, and I think I should go and do one other executive job. I’ve no idea what, but I see myself as a kind of change agent so it will probably be some kind of social civic intervention.”

At this stage, however, Valentine isn’t planning on relocating. She may feel her time is through at London First, but she certainly isn’t tired of London.