Pat Tomlinson's working life has been spent developing, delivering or teaching aspects of children's policy. Her decades of experience and learning include school teaching in the 1970s, to play development work in the 1980s, as a university academic developing and delivering childhood studies graduate programmes through the 1990s to 2009 when she took up the position of head of the early years programme at the Children's Workforce Development Council. Her interest in early childhood policy continues through involvement as governor of a large college and membership of a number of early years fora.