Janet Paraskeva
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Janet Paraskeva born 1946 in Newport, Monmouthshire is an Welsh-Greek-Cypriot from the United Kingdom. She is a British administrator who was appointed as the First Civil Service Commissioner on January 1, 2006. Paraskeva has also been a strong advocate for gay and lesbian rights in the United Kingdom. She intends to take advantage of the Civil Partnerships Act to 'marry' her partner of more than a decade, whom she will only refer to as 'Mary'. She prefers not to give Mary's surname and will only say that 'she works in education'. Paraskeva has two children from a previous marriage.
[edit] Career
Paraskeva has served as chief executive at the Law Society's Council and was director for England of the National Lottery Charities Board as well as being the force being setting up and running the England operation, awarding more than £1.5bn to voluntary organisations. Paraskeva has also served as a magistrate and as a member of the Youth Justice Board. Paraskeva is also involved with ChildLine, Ofsted and the British Youth Council.
On September 5, 2005, she was appointed to the board of Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency as a non-executive director.
On February 2006 Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell appointed Janet Paraskeva as head of the new Olympic Lottery Distributor (OLD), to serve in a four year term. She will be joined by other board members, who have not been appointed yet. The OLD came into existence in July 2005, following London's success in being selected as the city to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. The body's key role will be to ensure proper, timely and effective distribution of Lottery money and to fund the provision of facilities, services and functions required for the staging of the London 2012 Summer Olympics & Paralympic Games.
In 2006 Paraskeva, along with numerous other Greek Cypriots, was featured in a book by Kyriakos Tsioupras [1] called "It's all Greek to them" which focuses on Cypriots that have had influential significants within their communities.
