Lesley Cowley

Lesley Ruth Cowley OBE is a British businesswoman, chairwoman and non-executive director who is currently serving as Chair of Building Digital UK. She is best known as the former CEO of .uk domain name registry Nominet UK. She is also the current chair of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and Companies House and the consultancy Public Digital.

Career

In 1990, Cowley joined New College, Swindon, where she became director of corporate services.

Cowley joined Nominet as operations director in 1999 before being made managing director in 2002 and CEO in 2004, serving in that position for 10 years. She led the organisation through a period of significant change, during which it grew from 400,000 .uk registrations and 28 staff to 10.5m registrations and 200 staff. In addition, she played a leading role in the establishment of the Nominet Trust charity, the UK's leading social tech funder.

Cowley was appointed as the first non-executive chair of the DVLA in October 2014, and reappointed in October 2016. She was appointed lead non-executive director of The National Archives in January 2016, and non-executive chair of Companies House in June 2017.

Since October 2014, Cowley has served as the non-executive director of telecoms operator aql.

Education During her time working at New College, Swindon, the college offered Cowley the opportunity to go to university - having not previously gone The following year she was awarded the inaugural ICANN Leadership Award.

In 2014, Cowley was named by the Sunday Times as one of the 500 most influential people in the UK.

Cowley is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, Institute of Credit Management, the British Computer Society and the Royal Society of Arts.

Personal life Cowley was born and raised in Bristol and left school at 17, initially working in sales and credit management.