Maria is the Director of Training Development at St Giles and holds the education seat on the RR3. Maria has over 20 years’ experience of developing and delivering education programmes in prisons and the community to support people towards desistance. She started St Giles first flagship “Peer Advice Project” in HMP Wandsworth in 2002 training prisoners to NVQ Level 3 in Advice & Guidance and enabling them to support their peers in prison. She completed a MA at The Institute of Education on prison education focussing on the support and training needs of prison teachers. She has also contributed to pan-European projects transferring the peer model into different settings, for example training peer mentors in the Roma Community in Budapest. She is Director of Training Development at St Giles and a member of the Prisoner Learning Alliance Steering Committee.