Perrin Duncan is a program officer for Arnall Family Foundation, where she primarily focuses on criminal justice reform. She recently spoke with Oklahoma Gazette about her career and work at AFF.
Oklahoma Gazette: What was your childhood like?
Perrin Duncan: I grew up in Edmond, and that’s where my parents, Walt and Ann-Clore Duncan, still live. I have an older brother and a younger sister, James and Emma, and they are my best friends in the world. We had such a happy upbringing, and I really credit my parents for that. They’re just really interesting people who prioritize education. They made it a point that we sit down almost every night for family dinner and have discussions. In my parents’ house, there’s a door to our craft closet, and on the back of the door is a chalkboard. We’d be in the middle of a conversation as a family, and my dad would grab that chalkboard to draw a supply-and-demand curve to help us understand economics, or he’d draw how an oil well is drilled.
My parents also demonstrated the importance of being involved in our community.
Is there anything in particular about being involved in your community that you remember?
I remember going and doing some work at the zoo and helping build the zoo’s jungle gym. I remember going to a home and serving with Habitat for Humanity. We spent countless hours at the Junior League, where my mom was super involved.
I also remember the Oklahoma City National Memorial always being important to both of my parents. My dad was downtown when the bombing happened, and I was just a few months old at home with my mom. My mom’s been on the board of the memorial for many years, and my dad’s been a big supporter. I think both of them just found the story and the mission of the memorial to be really important. They also really value the Oklahoma Standard and what that truly means.
Tell me about college.
I went to DePauw University, which is a tiny liberal arts school in Greencastle, Indiana. I double-majored in economics and studio art and minored in Spanish, so my brain is kind of all over the place. DePauw is a very big study-abroad school, and I actually didn’t ever study abroad, but I spent one summer abroad, and then I also spent all four of our winter terms abroad. One year, I went to El Salvador and worked in a local community that had been bombed during the Salvadorian Civil War. I also went to Ecuador, and we set up medical clinics in communities that were two or more hours away from a hospital.
That was a really fascinating experience, and it taught me a lot about volunteerism, the positive and negative aspects. There was a community that we were actually run out of by a group of men with spears because they didn’t want Western medicine. I think about that moment all the time, even in the work that I do at AFF, because even in our own community, there are all these sub-communities, and sometimes people don’t want your help or they see solutions in a different way. Being conscious of that is, I think, crucial. We have to be invited, truly invited, into communities and partner with the community when we’re looking for change. We can’t just force things on people.
After college, you ended up getting a job in Bangkok, Thailand. What was that like?
I got offered a job to run the marketing and communications of a nonprofit based in Bangkok. The organization partnered with international schools to inspire global citizenship education. We took groups of students on cultural immersion and adventure trips. Some days I was in the office, working on a proposal for a principal. Other days, I was on the banks of the Mekong and Lao rivers, learning to fish with the locals and then talking with a group of 10- to 12-year-olds about how this food system looks different from our food system at home.
You moved back to Oklahoma in 2020 and worked for the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. When did you start with AFF?
When I met Sue Ann Arnall, it was just so clear that she’s the kind of person that I would love to work for. Her vision for what community looks like and her willingness to invest her time and wealth are so inspiring to me. Pretty soon after I met her, she offered me the opportunity to apply for a position here, and that was a little over three years ago.
When I was originally hired, the foundation was going through a little bit of transition. We’ve been around for 10 years now, and originally, the Arnold Family Foundation was invested in child welfare and animal welfare. More recently, we’ve been focused on criminal justice reform, homelessness, youth welfare and investing in economic mobility in Northeast OKC. My focus is on criminal justice reform and supporting the economic opportunity in Northeast OKC, and it’s really interesting. I mean, we get to work with the most incredible partners.
Why is your work in criminal justice so important to you?
In our country, we just allowed for a lot of the systems that have been in place to stay in place and never really questioned them. Is this truly adding to our public safety, or is this just what we’ve always done, so we’re going to keep doing it? But now we have people really looking with curiosity and care and trying to figure out if we are seeing increases in our jail population, is that actually a result of more violent people in our community? Or could that perhaps be related to people not paying fines and fees?
It’s hard to talk about that because people think people should be punished for what they did. But a $500 punishment feels very different to someone who makes $12,000 a year than it does to someone who makes $200,000. It’s not always a good punishment.
We’re also helping to expand diversion hubs into Cleveland and Canadian counties. They just do such amazing work of identifying what a person needs and can we help them connect with community services instead of putting them in prison.
Oklahoma has seemed to make a lot of progress on criminal justice reform. What is still left to do?
I’m really excited about the future of our state because I really do believe in Oklahomans. I think at our best, we do have the ability to make really great things happen, but it’s just a matter of keeping people in that mindset.
This article appears in Summer Guide 2025.