23 Nov In Conversation, Ava Parker, the President of Palm Beach State College, Frequently Returns to Two Words: Opportunity and Trajectory

Ava Parker’s life has led her to crisscross the state of Florida, leaving an imprint on nearly every region with her achievements. She grew up in the Florida Panhandle, in Santa Rosa County, but her talents took her further afield. The editorship of her high school yearbook propelled her to a journalism scholarship from the University of Florida, a prize sponsored by Florida Times-Union. The University of Florida became her intellectual home and training round—Parker stuck around long enough to earn her law school degree as well as her bachelor’s. For 25 years, she practiced law, first in Miami as an assistant public defender, and later in Tallahassee and Jacksonville. She didn’t actually leave the legal field until accepting her current role six years ago. By then, however, Parker was a fixture in state education. FINDING HER DESTINY “The cool thing about my opportunities that I think are unique is that I got to turn my avocation into my vocation,” Parker says. “I was always very much engaged in community service and in organizations.” She was appointed to the board of trustees for the University of Central Florida, but when Florida instituted a board of governors for the state university system as a result of an amendment to the state constitution, Parker won a plum position on the inaugural board. “It’s probably one of those opportunities that changed the trajectory of my career,” she says. “For over 10 years, I really participated in developing higher education policy for our universities, and that was part of my service to our state. And that certainly gave me an interesting perspective on higher education in the state of Florida.” But then her career took another turn, one that sent Parker on a different trajectory within the educational sector when she had the opportunity to build the newest state university. Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland became the state’s first public university focused on applied research in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. With her tenure on the board of governors winding down, and armed with a deep understanding of the system, she helped build out the campus and develop a vision for the institution. Hiring staff and faculty, preparing to receive students and becoming accredited—it was a heavy load. But the range and challenge of the tasks invigorated her; it was a mission that ultimately changed her view of herself. “It really turned me more into an operations person,” she recalls. “I was now inside after having been more of a governance-type person making decisions in Tallahassee. When I started doing that, that’s when I realized, this is interesting work, I understand it because I’ve been around it, and I’m now living with the policies that I helped to develop.” What was intended as a consultant position grew into something greater, as collaborating with talented people to make hard deadlines commanded her attention and interest. Her role as executive vice president and chief operating officer even seemed like destiny: “I felt like the kind of work that I was starting to do was the work that I’d been preparing to do all my life.”