Jackie Clark (philanthropist)

[2] Clark was born in Grey Lynn's Bethany Hospital, owned by her great-grandmother, and raised in Takapuna.

[1] She spent her last year of high school at Rangitoto College and then studied art and Southeast Asian history at University of Auckland.

Her first jobs were in low-income neighbourhoods -Otara and Owiraka - where she witnessed issues of poverty, crime, violence, drugs and alcohol and generational trauma first-hand.

She visited the refuge's safe houses and met women living there, and began to help with more specific needs.

She later resigned her job, sold her house and moved to Manurewa, south Auckland, so she could run the charity full-time.