Justine Greening (born 30 April 1969) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Education from 2016 to 2018. Prior to that, she served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 2010 to 2011, Secretary of State for Transport from 2011 to 2012 and Secretary of State for International Development from 2012 to 2016. A member of the Conservative Party, she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Putney from 2005 to 2019. Greening resigned as Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities in the January 2018 Cabinet reshuffle. On 3 September 2019, she announced she would not be standing as an MP at the next general election. Later the same day, she was one of 21 Conservative MPs who had the whip withdrawn after voting against the government. She sat as an independent MP until Parliament was dissolved for the December 2019 general election. Early life Greening was born in Rotherham, where she attended Oakwood Comprehensive School. She studied Business Economics and Accounting at the University of Southampton, graduating with a first class honours degree in 1990. She obtained an Executive MBA from the London Business School in 2000. Before entering parliament, Greening trained and qualified as an accountant, working as an accountant/finance manager for, amongst others, PricewaterhouseCoopers, GlaxoSmithKline and Centrica. She contested the constituency of Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush in 2001, finishing second with a reduced share of the vote for the Conservatives. Parliamentary career Early career Greening gained the seat of Putney from Labour in the 2005 general election on 5 May 2005. Greening won 15,497 votes (42.4% of the vote) giving her a majority of 1,766 (4.8%). She unseated Tony Colman, who had held the seat for Labour since defeating David Mellor in 1997. As the first Conservative elected on the evening of the election, her victory was the first real sign that the Conservative Party was to reduce the Labour Government's majority and begin to recover from the landslide defeats of the 1997 and 2001 general elections. Michael Howard, who had visited Putney to give a speech on his first day as Conservative Leader, returned there on the morning after the election to congratulate Putney Conservatives and give the speech in which he announced his intention to step down. Greening was the youngest female Conservative MP in the House of Commons until Chloe Smith was elected to Parliament on 12 October