My earliest memory is of watching the moon landings in 1969. It is astonishing to think how much this world has changed since then. My second memory is of being thrown forward out of my car seat, when my mother had to break suddenly to let some chickens cross the road in front of us. We did not live on a farm but in Nigeria, where my father was a petroleum engineer working with Shell. We were evacuated during the Biafran war, and my parents lost everything except for the contents of two suitcases. My sisters and I were brought up to understand that in the end possessions are not really so important, and they can be lost in the blink of an eye. Much more important are good relationships, character and integrity, which stay with you forever.

During the first eighteen years of my life we moved frequently... from Nigeria to Borneo then to the Middle East and Scotland. Wherever we were posted, though, we always returned to England ‘on leave' for several months a year. While other people might have gone abroad to France for their holidays, we came back home. For me, the legacy of this childhood is that I am absolutely passionate about Britain. Having travelled so much both outside of Britain and within these shores, I firmly believe that Britain is the best country in the world. There is nowhere else that matches this country for history, landscape, people and values.

After specialising in maths and science at school, I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, then joined a strategy consulting company called Bain & Company. There I learned all about how to look at a business to see how it can create prosperity over the long term, and deliver a good service to its customers in the most efficient way. This kind of approach is now desperately needed in some areas of our public sector, where ‘value for money' is often discussed but not always delivered. One of the more interesting projects that I worked on was with a company that made military aircraft simulators. I had the slightly surreal experience of ‘flying' a bomber over the Kuwaiti oilfields whilst sitting in an office in the Pentagon, in the week that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. At the time, this was cutting edge graphics technology, and I had had a preview of the simulator that was going to be used to train the US pilots before they flew in to get rid of Saddam. Now, of course, the same technology can be found on a child's computer game.

Following Bain, I worked as a financial analyst for Sainsbury's, developing their investment plans. Nowadays, the supermarket is often at the heart of the community, but we have to make sure that supermarkets don't kill off town centres. Supermarkets are also at the front line of the battle for British food and British farmers. If elected, I would be one of the few MPs with direct experience of working at senior levels in a supermarket. I have always been confident that with some steady pressure we can get the supermarkets to change, to get much better at promoting the real interests of British consumers and farmers, and I fully support Nick Herbert's proposal for a Supermarket Ombudsman.

In 1995, I married my husband, Andrew, and we moved to Chile, in South America where he had been posted by his employer. Looking for a British company with operations in Chile that I could go and work for, I found a great British institution with a Chilean subsidiary and joined N M Rothschild & Sons as an investment banker. I learned Spanish and worked on financing of power stations (gas and hydroelectric), gas pipelines and hospitals. After a short spell in Australia, where I again worked with Rothschilds on power stations, we moved back to settle permanently in Britain.

Returning to consultancy work, I worked with small and medium sized businesses, assessing and advising on their business plans. This lead me to train in psychological assessment, so that I could do similar work with management teams - looking at how to get the best from people - and to set up my business, Cardinal. We draw together strategic and financial thinking alongside psychological analysis to work out whether management teams have the people and processes that they need to succeed. I have had the privilege of working with many enterprising British companies, and have met so many entrepreneurs who have created and grown companies from the humblest beginnings. Innovation has always been a British talent, and we now need to harness it to help diversify our economy.

Since 2000, we have been living in South London, where I have had the chance to really contribute to my local community. As a local councillor with Wandsworth Borough Council I have been involved in all aspects of community life, from health and social care to planning and the environment. My ward, Nightingale, has 10,000 people and my constituents problems ranged from homelessness to parking problems. I have also been a school governor, and am now Chair of Governors, of a comprehensive secondary school and have seen how a school can be transformed by strong leadership, discipline and good teaching. I have been involved in local campaigns of all descriptions, from defending local hospitals to campaigning to improve children's playgrounds, and look forward to getting involved as a Member of Parliament and fighting battles for my constituents both locally and at Westminster.

My life with the Conservative Party has presented some other interesting challenges. I was the candidate against John Prescott in Hull East in the 2005 General Election. Hull shows, perhaps more clearly than any other major British city, the vicious cycle that can result from low education standards and a failure to attract and nurture private enterprise. This experience, more than any other, convinced me that the only way to improve the life chances for our poorest children is to transform our schools with the Swedish-style model that is at the heart of Michael Gove's revolutionary proposals.

Using my background in analysing finances and organisations, I also worked with the James Commission, which was set up by Michael Howard to identify waste in public spending. The forensic line-by-line analysis of finances that was needed then will also be needed when we get into power and have to take the scalpel to the wasteful quangocracy that has grown up over the last 12 years. More recently, I worked with Peter Lilley and Bob Geldof on the Conservative Party's Globalisation and Global Poverty Review, where I was able to apply my knowledge of organisations to propose ways of increasing the effectiveness of the Department for International Development. This led to further work with Andrew Mitchell and the Shadow International Development team in preparing the International Development Green Paper.

Although I love to be busy and to contribute to society, I would not be able to do any of this without the support and interest shown by my family. Andrew and I have three children, and I try to include the children in some of the things that I do. I hope that their lives will be enriched and their minds broadened by the experiences that my political and community work gives them.They are very good at delivering leaflets and they certainly know more about their community than most of their friends do. Andrew comes from a community-minded family so he fully understands why I feel compelled to work so hard to try to make society work better. He assures me that he is doing his bit for society by keeping bees to ensure that we still have flowers in our gardens and crops in our fields... not to mention some rather good honey.