Dido Harding is a name that has never been far from the headlines in recent years.
After serving as TalkTalk's first CEO, she became head of NHS Improvement in 2017 and led the NHS Test and Trace programme during the pandemic until April 2021.
Having been elevated to the House of Lords as a Conservative life peer in 2014, her name had been reported as being in contention to be the new chief executive of the NHS.
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But how much do you know about Dido Harding and her career in the private and public sectors?
What's in a name?
Born Diana Mary Harding, the now Baroness Harding of Winscombe was born in 1967 to John Harding, second Baron of Petherton.
She is the granddaughter of Field Marshal John Harding, the first baron, who commanded the Desert Rats for a few months during the Second World War.
Raised in Dorset, she attended St Antony's Leweston before graduating Magdalen College, Oxford, where she had studied alongside future Prime Minister David Cameron.
Journey to TalkTalk
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After graduating in 1988, she was hired by management consultancy McKinsey & Company before being appointed marketing director of Thomas Cook in 1995.
She then moved on to Manpower and Kingfisher in 1998 and then Woolworths a year later.
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Between 2000 and 2004, she was commercial director for value added foods and then international support director at Tesco.
She took a seat on Sainsbury's board in 2008 after joining a year before as convenience store director.
Chief executive of TalkTalk
Baroness Harding was named chief executive of TalkTalk in 2020 when the business was split from Carphone Warehouse and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
During her time at the company, TalkTalk TV was launched in 2012 while it introduced a 1GB fibre network in York in 2014, making it Britain’s first gigabit city.
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Baroness Harding, she faced calls to resign in 2015 after the business was hit by a cyber attack during which personal and banking details of up to four million customers, not all of which were encrypted, were thought to have been accessed.
In February 2017, it was announced she would be stepping down from the role to focus on her public service activities.
Public Service
In October 2017, Baroness Harding was named as chair of NHS Improvement, which oversees all hospitals as well as independent providers of NHS-funded care.
In the wake of her appointment, Parliament's Health Select Committee recommended that she resign as a Conservative peer and sit as a crossbench peer in order to 'allow for greater parliamentary and public confidence in her ability to challenge government ministers and policies if this role demands it'.
However, Baroness Harding decided to remain as a Tory life peer.
In May 2020, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that she would be put in charge of the NHS Test and Trace programme, then called 'track, test and trace', as part of the Government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A month later it was announced that the 海角视频 Government intended to switch its contact-recording mobile phone app from a centralised model to the decentralised approach pioneered by Apple and Google, due to privacy concerns.
Baroness Harding was to decide on the suitability of the alternative model.
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In August 2020, the Government announced a merger between Public Health England and NHS Test and Trace to form the National Institute for Health Protection, with Baroness Harding as interim chief executive.
After stepping down as the head of Test and Trace in April 2021, her name was reported to be contention to be the new CEO of the NHS.
However, it was reported at the end of June that the Government had ruled out her appointment.