Lady Edwina Grosvenor

Lady Edwina Louise Snow (née Grosvenor; born 4 November 1981) is an English criminologist, philanthropist and prison reformer. She is a founder and a trustee of the charity The Clink, and founder of the charity One Small Thing. She is the sister of Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster.

Early life and education

Lady Edwina Louise Grosvenor was born at Eaton Hall, Cheshire, on 4 November 1981. She is the daughter of the 6th Duke of Westminster and Natalia Ayesha Phillips. Through her mother, she is descended from the Romanov imperial family of Russia and the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, as well as from the latter's great-grandfather – African tribal chief turned Russian nobleman Abram Petrovich Hannibal. Grosvenor's godmother was Diana, Princess of Wales. She went to a co-educational school in Shropshire. At the age of 12, she was taken to a Liverpool rehabilitation centre, where she was introduced to heroin addicts and became interested in helping society's unseen people. At age 15, she volunteered at a homeless shelter run by the charity Save the Family. She spent her gap year working in a prison in Kathmandu before studying criminology at Northumbria University. She studied criminal behaviour at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. In August 2021, Grosvenor graduated from Solent University with a master’s degree in criminology and crime scene management, achieving a distinction.

Career

Prison reform

During her time in Nepal, Grosvenor worked for The Esther Benjamins Trust, a charity which works to have innocent children removed from prison. She also worked at the Central Jail in Kathmandu. Lady Edwina commissioned research by the Corston Coalition into the needs of women offenders, spent a year as a support worker at Cheshire's HM Prison Styal, then worked in HM Prison Garth in Lancashire, helping with the restorative justice program. She sits on the Advisory Board for Female Offenders under the Secretary of State for Justice and, from 2007 to 2010, was an advisor to James Jones, then Bishop of Liverpool and Bishop to Her Majesty's Prisons. In 2009, Grosvenor became the founding investor of The Clink, a British charity that identifies the training and support needed for prisoners to find jobs following release. The Clink restaurant, a fine-dining training restaurant, opened in HM Prison High Down in 2009. She became a trustee of the charity in 2011, before stepping down as a trustee in 2018. She now serves as one of The Clink ambassadors.

In 2014, Grosvenor presented the BBC Radio 4 Charity Appeal for the Prisoners' Advice Service. In 2015, she visited Ellesmere College and delivered a speech about prison reform and rehabilitation. She founded One Small Thing, a charity that seeks to understand the trauma within the prison system and raise awareness of how compassion and respect can prevent women from re-offending. One Small Thing trains prison staff about trauma, helps them change their behaviour to protect women inmates, and develops trauma services within prisons. Edwina founded the Becoming Trauma Informed program across the Female Prison Estate in England and Wales. In September 2017, One Small Thing collaborated with the Rumi Foundation to research women's prisons around the country. In 2018, One Small Thing was awarded the Howard League for Penal Reform's Criminal Justice Champion Award.

Grosvenor is a trustee of the Centre for Mental Health, and has established trauma-informed mental health workshops in women's prisons. She is an ambassador of the No Way Trust, which educates students about the realities of prison life, and crime and consequences, and hosts the podcast "Justice", in which she discusses the environment of British prisons. Grosvenor became a member of the advisory board to the Centre for Criminology in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford, and, in 2020, donated £90,000 to the University of Oxford to fund the Death Penalty Research Unit. She is a member of the Vice Chancellor's Circle of Benefactors of the University of Oxford's Faculty of Law. Lady Edwina works on a project called Hope Street, a healing community alternative for women who were in custody prior to sentencing or already served their sentences alongside their children. She also works with Pathways, a London-based community regeneration program that helps to create sustainable businesses run by former offenders.

Other ventures and advocacy

In January 2022, Grosvenor became a founding member of the Global Philanthropic Advisory Board. She is a patron of Paladin, a non-profit advocacy service for victims of stalking. In March 2022, she became the High Sheriff of Hampshire.

Recognition

In July 2018, Grosvenor was awarded an honorary fellowship of Liverpool John Moores University for her contribution to public life.

Personal life

Grosvenor married British television presenter Dan Snow on 27 November 2010 at Bishop's Lodge in Woolton, Liverpool in an Anglican ceremony performed by James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool. They have three children.