Jennifer Parker-Harley began her musical studies with her parents in her home state of South Carolina. She went on to complete high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan and received degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Michigan State University. In 2005, she completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

As a soloist, Jennifer has been a prizewinner in several national competitions, including the 1998 and 2001 Young Artist Competition of the National Flute Association, the Flute Talk competition, the Myrna Brown Competition and the Tilden Competition. Before joining the Columbus Symphony Orchestra in 2000, she was a member of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in Fort Wayne, Indiana and has appeared with orchestras throughout the Midwest, including the Cincinnati and St. Louis Symphonies. 

She is also active in the National Flute Association, and was most recently featured as a soloist on the Generation X All-Stars program at the Nashville Convention and on a program of second flutists from major orchestras around the country at the 2008 convention in Kansas City. She currently serves as coordinator of the NFA Orchestral Masterclass Competition.

Jennifer is currently in the second year of her appointment as Assistant Professor of Flute at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.  She is excited to have returned home, where she enjoys an active schedule as a recitalist and chamber musician and has a wonderful studio of the South's most promising young flutists and teachers.  She will spend summer, 2010, at the Music on the Hill Festival, the Interlochen Arts Camp, and a youth orchestra festival in Trujillo, Peru.

Jennifer lives in downtown Columbia with her husband, bassoonist and USC SoM faculty member Mike Harley, and their two young daughters, Ella and Lucia.