Chinyelu Susan “Chi” Onwurah was born in Wallsend, England, in 1965, to a Newcastle mother and a Nigerian father who was studying dentistry at Newcastle University. As a baby she moved with her family to Awka, Nigeria, but the outbreak of the Biafran Civil War two years later forced her mother to bring the children back to England as refugees while her father remained in Nigeria.
Raised in Kenton, Newcastle, Onwurah attended Kenton Comprehensive School, where at 17 she was elected the school's ‘MP’ in a mock election. She went on to study Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London, graduating in 1987 into what she has since described as a “very male, very racist and very sexist” environment, before building a two-decade engineering career spanning hardware, software and product strategy across the UK, France, the US, Nigeria and Denmark.
Onwurah later earned an MBA from Manchester Business School and became a Chartered Engineer, spending six years at telecoms regulator Ofcom as Head of Telecoms Technology, where she led development of the physical infrastructure access product that helped expand UK fibre broadband coverage.
In 2010, Onwurah was elected Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, becoming Newcastle's first Black MP. She has held numerous shadow ministerial roles covering science, industrial strategy and digital policy, and since 2024 has chaired the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee, drawing directly on her engineering background to scrutinise government policy.
- Newcastle's first Black Member of Parliament, elected in 2010
- Chartered Electrical Engineer with over two decades of international industry experience prior to politics
- Led development of Ofcom's Physical Infrastructure Access product, expanding competition and fibre broadband coverage across the UK
- Chair of the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee since 2024
- Long-serving campaigner for greater representation of engineers and scientists in Parliament
- Childhood displacement can shape a lifelong sense of purpose. Onwurah's family's experience as refugees from the Biafran Civil War informs her ongoing commitment to representing marginalised communities.
- Bring your professional expertise directly into public service. Rather than leaving engineering behind, Onwurah has used her technical background to strengthen her parliamentary scrutiny of science and technology policy.
- Persist in environments that weren't built to welcome you. She has spoken candidly about experiencing racism and sexism at Imperial College in the 1980s, without it deterring her subsequent career.
- Local firsts matter as much as national ones. Being Newcastle's first Black MP carried significance for her constituency's own sense of representation, distinct from any national milestone.