Ms Parker will resign from her seven-year tenure as chief executive of Cure Kids in mid-May to become Wakatipu Trails Trust (WTT) chief executive, a part-time paid-position heading the WTT's 12 trustees and a membership numbering several hundred.
"The key challenge ahead will be funding, for growth to expand the number of trails" she said.
Cure Kids, which is second only to the Government in providing research funding for children's diseases, has raised more than $23 million since its inception in 1975, all of which is passed into research grants.
Ms Parker said the Cure Kids brand emerged from a Coronet Peak ski-field fund-raising event in 2000.
What followed was "massive backing" from the Wakatipu basin, University of Otago, Dunedin and Invercargill to become a national charity which had helped save the lives of thousands of children, with research grants for diseases including cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, cot death and heart diseases.
"The Otago region contributed hugely to Cure Kids becoming a well-funded national identity," she said.
Ms Parker believes she is leaving Cure Kids in a sound financial state and is proud that three research chairs; two at the University of Otago and another at Auckland, are set to be funded in perpetuity by the end of 2010.
Some research grants are already committed seven years into the future, she said.
Ms Parker, formerly from Tauranga, spent several years in advertising in London and New Zealand before "dropping out" and relocating to Queenstown 12 years ago with her family.
She is an avid walker and cyclist.
"Most weekends I'm out on the trails with friends or family," she said.
She said the Government's recently mooted concept of establishing a New Zealand-wide trailway could offer the WTT the opportunity to expand and she would focus on how trails would be marketed domestically and internationally.
"More trails will be a wonderful legacy for today and future generations," Ms Parker said.
Ms Parker replaces Renee Bowman, who has returned to Australia for family reasons.
