Bio

Never having known her father and raised by a volatile, mentally unstable mother, Jenny Mundy-Castle’s earliest concept of “consent” was to avoid conflict at any cost. Unsupervised and unprotected, that made her an ideal target for predatory men. Molested as a young child, statutorily and forcibly raped as a teen, and through an emotionally and sexually abusive marriage, Jenny learned to protect herself from conflict by not saying, “no.”

Taking place in settings ranging from New Mexico and Nigeria to Scotland and an Ivy League campus, her memoir Every Time I Didn’t Say No explores her story. Suffering through extraordinary circumstances, Jenny finds strength and resilience, then boundaries and the power of saying “no” in relationships.

Having dropped out of public school at sixteen, Jenny earned a GED and took courses at a junior college, ultimately earning acceptance at Columbia University. She graduated magna cum laude with degrees in literature and creative writing and her thesis, which she later turned into a literary fiction novel, was awarded highest honors.

Her journey eventually led to three graduate degrees in education and a career as an instructional coach and highly respected trainer and expert in the field of education. Jenny specializes in training classroom teachers in effective strategies for teaching students with little or no command of the English language, specifically including children and young adults entering public schools directly from refugee camps.

In addition to Every Time I Didn't Say No, Jenny has written seven other memoirs and novels in genres such as literary fiction and psychological thriller and has published over 40 articles on parenting, education, #metoo, and consent. Her articles have been featured in Family Matters, Scary Mommy, Your Tango, Better Marketing, P.S. I Love You, and more.

Jenny is regularly sought out internationally as a professional public speaker, often training audiences that number in the hundreds. She has also given numerous keynote speeches in both the United States and abroad.

A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a dual citizen of the UK and the US, Jenny has been a schoolteacher in the US, Nigeria, and Scotland, studied yoga and earned her yoga instructor certification in India, taken classes in preparing Thai cuisine in Thailand, and has spent at least one month living in every continent on the planet except Antarctica. While studying at Columbia, she earned extra money reading people’s tarot on the subway, which strangers often found her eerily good at doing.