Snowdon is a stepmother to two young men (one in his first year at uni and the other in the Upper Sixth) and a mother to a two year old daughter who currently attends a local nursery in London. Snowdon has been passionate about education since forcing her neighbourhood peers to attend her basement “school” during the two long teachers’ strikes in Montreal in the late 1970’s. Before becoming a lawyer, Snowdon taught for one year in the French school system in Paris; as a law student, she did supply/substitute teaching within the French-language state school system in Canada. So keen was Snowdon to share her vision of a rich curriculum that she at one point business-planned the establishment of a day school in London. However, she realised very quickly as two successive school sites in SW London were gobbled up by developers and turned into flats that she was perhaps in the wrong game.
Over the past decade, Snowdon has cajoled her husband into accompanying her to school open days around the country, has talked to anyone with kids about the schools they send them to, and accosts anyone related to the teaching profession on social occasions. She maintains contacts with educators around the world. Since all of the above feed her soul but not her kids, for over five years she held a day job as a lawyer at a Magic Circle firm in London (until she was recently made redundant along with 140 other lawyers) where she regularly offered thoughts on education to colleagues and clients alike…
