1. Lynda Chalker served as Minister of State for Overseas Development and Africa at the Foreign Office in the Conservative government from 1989 to 1997.
17 Facts About Lynda Chalker
1. 2.
Lynda Chalker is the former president of the Royal Geographical Society.
3.
Lynda Chalker was educated at Roedean, Heidelberg University, Queen Mary University of London and the University of Westminster, and worked as a statistician and market researcher, including spells with Shell-Mex and BP and Opinion Research Centre, before entering Parliament in 1974 as MP for Wallasey, Merseyside, succeeding the former Cabinet minister Ernest Marples.
4.
Lynda Chalker held a number of government posts, including spells as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Security from 1979 to 1982 and at the Department of Transport from 1982 to 1983.
5.
Lynda Chalker was granted a life peerage as Baroness Lynda Chalker of Wallasey, of Leigh-on-Sea in the County of Essex in 1992, after losing her seat at the general election of that year.
6.
Lynda Chalker is the founder and president of Africa Matters Limited, an independent consultancy providing advice and assistance to companies initiating, developing or growing their activities in Africa.
7.
Lynda Chalker is a member of the international advisory board of Lafarge and sits on the board of trustees of the Investment Climate Facility for Africa.
8.
Lynda Chalker is a consultant for Uganda's Presidential Investors Roundtable that advises the president Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, on ways to improve Uganda's investment climate and competitiveness.
9.
Lynda Chalker founded the Chalker Foundation, which seeks to support the improvement of healthcare in Africa.
10.
Lynda Chalker held the position of non-executive director and chairman of the Corporate Responsibility and Reputation Committee for Unilever, retiring in May 2007, having served three terms of three years.
11.
Lynda Chalker joined the board of Unilever as an advisory director in 1998, becoming a non-executive director in 2004.
12.
Lynda Chalker is a former chairman of the Medicines for Malaria Venture, a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to reducing the burden of malaria in disease endemic countries.
13.
Lynda Chalker is a former non-executive director of Group Five.
14.
Lynda Chalker was awarded the Livingstone Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 2000.
15.
In June 2014, Lynda Chalker was awarded honorary citizenship of Mozambique by President Armando Guebuza for services to that country.
16.
Lynda Chalker was shortlisted for the Grassroot Diplomat Initiative Award in 2015 for her work with Africa Matters, and she remains in the directory of the Grassroot Diplomat Who's Who publication.
17.
In 2018, it was announced that Lynda Chalker would take over from Nicholas Crane as president of the Royal Geographical Society.