Joanna Penn, Baroness Penn

Joanna Carolyn Penn, Baroness Penn (born 1985), known as JoJo Penn, is a British political advisor. She was a baroness-in-waiting (a government whip) from March 2020 to September 2022. Since 1 March 2024 she has been a Minister on Leave.

From November 2023 to March 2024, she was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing and Communities in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which she has been temporarily replaced by Baroness Swinburne while she is a Minister on Leave.

Biography
Penn studied history and politics at the University of Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 2006. She later studied at Harvard University, completing a Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree in 2015.

She served as Deputy Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Theresa May from 2016 to 2019. In September 2019, it was announced that she would be made a Conservative Party life peer in the 2019 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours. She was created Baroness Penn, of Teddington in the London Borough of Richmond, on 10 October 2019.

Penn became the youngest member of the House of Lords when she joined the House on 21 October 2019: she was succeeded as baby of the house by Lord Harlech following the election on 14 July 2021. She made her maiden speech on 30 January 2020 during a debate on Defence, Diplomacy and Development Policy. From 29 October 2019 to 21 April 2020, she was a member of the Lord's Science and Technology Committee. She served as a baroness-in-waiting, a junior government whip, from 19 March 2020 to 20 September 2022. Between 30 October 2022 and 13 November 2023, she was a parliamentary secretary, the most junior level of minister, in HM Treasury.