Norvela Forster

Born in Gillingham, Kent, Forster attended South Wilts Grammar School for Girls, Salisbury, and Bedford College, University of London, where she was President of the Union Society and obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. She joined Imperial Chemical Industries at Billingham after working for them during a university vacation, but was swiftly moved from the laboratories to management.

In 1960 she was made an assistant to Richard Beeching, the technical director who ran the company's development department. She recalled that at one point the department had the idea of filling a railway carriage with all their latest products and taking it around the country to demonstrate to customers; when Beeching asked where to get such a carriage, she did not know. The next day she heard of Beeching's appointment to the British Transport Commission overlooking British Rail. In the mid-1960s she worked on licensing plastics produced at the ICI plant in Welwyn Garden City. She also served on Hampstead Borough Council as a Conservative from 1962 to 1965.

Forster left ICI in 1966, determined to use her experience to read for the Bar and become a patent attorney. To pay her way she worked as a business consultant, but when she secured a particularly big job in January 1968, she found she had no time to continue her studies and became a full-time consultant. By 1970, being self-employed was becoming impractical so she established Industrial Aids Limited as a consultancy business. The business grew rapidly and allowed her to indulge her hobby of yacht racing.