Karren Brady

A Birmingham City player made a comment about this woman’s breasts. Too bad for him, she was the managing director of the club. So she sold him.

Karren Brady went straight into advertising at 18, joining Saatchi & Saatchi.

A year later, she moved to LBC as a sales exec and landed a major client by offering a personal guarantee on an ad deal she wasn’t authorised to make.

The campaign worked.

So that client, publisher David Sullivan, hired her.

When she was 23, Karren spotted an advert for Birmingham City FC.

She convinced Sullivan to buy it. And to let her run it.

In her first year as managing director, the club turned a profit.

She listed it on the London Stock Exchange, becoming the youngest MD of a UK plc.

By 2002, Birmingham City had reached the Premier League.

7 years later, the club sold for £82 million.

Then Sullivan and his business partner David Gold bought West Ham United and brought Karren in as vice-chair.

Today, West Ham is worth over £800 million.

But Brady also built a public career beyond football.

She became a regular columnist, a best-selling author, and a mainstay on “The Apprentice.”

She’s held board roles at Channel 4 and Syco.

In 2013, she was appointed the UK government’s Small Business Ambassador.

And in 2014, she was made a life peer in the House of Lords.