About Jennifer Phillips

Jennifer was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia when she was 13. In her early teens she was recognized and honoured as a youth leader, promising writer and a gifted artist. She won prizes, had her work published, and was an energetic Girl Guide leader. She spent much of her spare time in swimming and athletic training and becoming an Australian state champion athlete when she was 14. At the age of 17 she returned to New Zealand and 6 months later entered Teachers College. She completed 3 years at the Palmerston North Teachers College (now College of Education) majoring in Art and Maths and completed a third of a degree at the same time. She went on to teach in a number of Hawkes Bay Primary Schools for 8 years, continued to train for athletics and squash and enjoyed hosting overseas visitors who belonged to Mensa or different Christian groups.

In 1977 she married Peter and 5 years later their first child was born. She left teaching and worked from home on a range of projects while rearing 3 children and recovering from 4 miscarriages. These projects included completing a degree in Education and earning the award of Massey Scholar, which is given to the top 5% of students. She also completed a certificate course in Lay Preaching and spent 15 years preaching and taking Church services. In the early 1980’s she was a Caregiver for Napier branch of Barnardos and started and supervising a licensed preschool, but was involved in the first of 4 car accidents and had to close the preschool down. After recovering sufficiently, she did some relief teaching . She continued to write and published 4 books, jointly owned and operated a printing business, bought and maintained rental properties was on a number of voluntary committees. She also made screen printed items, art works, and wrote songs and poems. Over the years she has developed a number of courses for different ages including Preschool Reading, Computing subjects, Visual Merchandising, and Retailing. The latter two were developed after she returned to part time teaching in 1995 at a Napier secondary school, where she taught art as well as some adult classes in screen-printing and guitar. Teaching and assessing classroom management were other areas in which she was involved as part of her role as a voluntary Christian Educator in Schools and committee member on the District Committee of the Churches Education Commission.

In 1996 while at a WISE Women meeting, she meet a member of the Hawkes Bay branch of FUW and consequently joined becoming involved as a committee member.

In 2000 she emigrated to Australia and soon found the AFUW group. She joined the committee and served as a proxy for AFUW-ACT at the National Council Meetings. Because she had taught herself HTML she was able to create web sites including the AFUW-ACT web site, which she continues to maintain. Portfoilio of web designs

In 2001 she started teaching IT at Secondary School while continuing to make and maintain web sites for friends, make the occasional art work, teach adult classes a range of computer and Internet related topics and actively serve on various committees, including CEGACT (Computer Education Group of the ACT) and later as the CEGACT representative on COACTEA and AFUW representative on the International Womens Day Breakfast Committee (IWD).

In 2003 she took on the position of president of the Australian Federation of University Women – ACT and attended the IFUW conference in Perth as an Australian representative for the Communications Strategy Workshop. She also completed an IT Diploma in multimedia integration, which opened the door for her to use her computer art skills. For the Christmas of 2003 her husband bought her Photoshop and this has enabled her to create digital art works as another of her many creative "leisure time" activities. Some of her exhibitions can be seen at: citwings.com

In 2004 she published her 5th book, “You Can Make A Web Site” and completed a certificate in Workplace Training and Assessment and a certificate in Screen enabling her to make 3D animated movies.

In 2006 she suffered another car accident, which has slowed her down, affecting the amount of work she has been able to acomplish.

Some of her achievements have been published in newspapers and can be viewed at: members.pcug.org.au/~phillips

She is currently teaching part time, creating art and working on an autobiography containing her testimonies, some can be read on this site.