Penny Parker

I seem to have a trail of changes of direction in my CV…I was a geographer for my first two years at Newnham but swapped to law for my final year and then broadened my legal education before law school finals with a Masters in European law in Brussels.  After law school I joined Freshfields and then on qualifying in the dispute resolution team changed from a litigator to a corporate lawyer. While my children were very young I worked for a legal publisher, writing and editing. Then a visit to my local prison, for the right reasons, changed my direction. I trained as a tutor for a restorative justice programme which I set up and ran in HMP Wandsworth for 12 years. Over the period I also set the programme up in HMP Bronzefield (a women’s prison) and HMP Pentonville and also has experience of delivering the programme in a lifers’ unit.

I also decided to test out my personal criminological theorising with a Masters in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Kings, London.  After a while working largely as a volunteer, I stepped back into paid work in the charity sector.  Then not getting a job I thought I was well suited to gave me the nudge I needed to set up StandOut  to deliver meaningful support for people preparing to leave prison. Along the way, as well as being a school governor and trustee of smaller charities, I have also been a trustee of the Eden Project in Cornwall, bringing my third sector and community experiences to their community based projects. I now realise that what I should have read was Social and Political Science (SPS as it was in those days)!

I am passionate about the role of the third sector and its wider contribution to society and happy to share my experiences on career routes into the third sector as well of course  anyone interested in prisons.