She was born on 8 September 1959 in Stoke-on-Trent, the daughter of David Rowland Jones and Pearl Jones (née Jenkins). She was educated at Welshpool High School and Shrewsbury High School, and studied Maths at Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating in 1980.[1] She then joined the Diplomatic Service, with postings in Jordan and Hungary. She was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) for her role in arranging Queen Elizabeth II's state visit to Hungary in 1993. She left the diplomatic service in 1996 to train as a priest, and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1997.[2]
She trained for the ministry at St John's College, Nottingham.[1][2] She was then ordained as a deacon at Petertide 1999 (26 June)[3] and then as a priest the following Petertide (24 June 2000), both times by Alwyn Rice Jones, Bishop of St Asaph and Archbishop of Wales, at St Asaph Cathedral.[4]
In 2002, she moved to South Africa to marry Justus Marcus, a South African bishop. Following his death from cancer in 2003, she worked as a Research Adviser to successive Archbishops of Cape Town.[2] In 2011, she completed a PhD in philosophy of religion and public theology at the University of Nottingham under the supervision of Karen Kilby, with a doctoral thesis titled "Doing God in Public: an Anglican interpretation of MacIntyre's tradition-based reasoning as a Christian praxis for a pluralist world".[2][5] In the same year, she married Peter Evans, a Welsh man living in South Africa, and in 2013 they returned to Wales, where she became Priest in Charge of St John the Baptist Church, Cardiff.[2]
After her appointment as Dean of St Davids was announced in November 2017, she was installed as Dean in May 2018.[2]
