Sophia Parker
Sophia is a public policy specialist, and a feminist with an affinity for anthropology and design. She is passionate about finding new ways to address inequality and poverty. For her this is about sharing power – economic, political and social – more fairly. She is also a little bit impatient.
What has she done?
Sophia is currently working as the Associate Head of Strategy at the NSPCC.
Prior to this she’d been on a year-long fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Here she led a project looking at the lessons Britain can learn from the declining living standards that many Americans are experiencing today. Sophia has worked in and around the public policy world for over a decade, with senior leadership roles in two thinktanks – Demos and the Resolution Foundation.
Alongside her work on social policy and poverty she has an abiding interest in finding new and better ways of tackling some of the big social challenges. She set up and ran the award-winning Social Innovation Lab for Kent and over the years she’s published books and articles in this field.
Awards & Associations
Sophia has worked with lots of interesting groups over the years in different roles, including as a Director of UK Online Centres, and a Board member of the Women’s Budget Group and the Fabian Women’s Network.
She is an associate at Demos, Engine, and ESRO Ltd, and a Fellow of the RSA.
Last year ESRO and the Social Innovation Lab for Kent won the Market Research Society’s award for social policy work, for her Just Coping project.
Ask Sophia About...
- How to ‘translate’ between different sectors such as academia, policy, design and delivery
- How to make complex ideas easy to understand
- Telling stories that bring social issues or organisational dynamics to life
- Any bus route in London
- How to build relationships and networks
- The murky world of policy-making
- How to make synthesising lots of information fun and useful