Sara Lamb Parkin OBE
Sara Parkin OBE is to be awarded a Doctor of Laws (LLD) on Wednesday 2 July 2025 during the morning ceremony.
Sara Parkin is Principal Associate of The Sustainability Literacy Project, Chair of Population Matters, and Co-founder of Forum for the Future. She served as a Trustee of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment until 2022.
Born in Aberdeen, Sara graduated as a nurse in Edinburgh before making a career switch into green politics in the early 1970s. From then, she took on leading roles in the UK Green Party and served as Co-Secretary of what is now known as The European Green Party. She no longer has any political affiliation.
For Forum for the Future, a leading international sustainability organisation, she designed and ran a Masters Programme in Leadership for Sustainable Development which now has more than 200 graduates in positions of increasing influence.
Sara has worked with a wide range of people and organisations throughout her career, including students, governments, engineers, senior NATO officers and University vice-chancellors.
She has written several books, including The Positive Deviant: leadership for sustainability in a perverse world (2010), and hopes to publish another in 2026 provisionally titled What Does Good Look Like?
Sara lives on the Island of Islay and is a keen walker, bird watcher and gardener. Over the course of two decades, she and her husband have walked the Pilgrim’s Way stages from Le Puy in France to Santiago de Compostella in Spain, and from Le Puy back to Islay.