Having spent holidays with family in Manchester as a child, she returned to live here in the 1980s. She continued her membership of the IMG in Manchester, as well as supporting the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the 1990s and Jews for Justice for Palestinians.

It was also at university that Pia became involved in political activism, supporting the Third World First and the anti-apartheid movements. Pia began taking an active part in protests. She joined the International Marxist Group (IMG) when living in Glasgow training to become a teacher. She also joined Glasgow Women’s Group. Her activism continued when she moved to Wolverhampton in 1976, where she started a Wolverhampton Anti-Racist Committee.

Pia would attend synagogue on her own from the age of nine whilst her parents were working, and by age 14 she was teaching in cheder. As an early teen she began to doubt her faith but continued to practise Jewish traditions. It was in Oxford, when at university, that Pia stopped observing the Jewish faith. Later in life however, she wanted to celebrate her Jewish identity so became involved in liberation seder nights and attended meetings of the Jewish Historical Society.

Pia was born in 1952 in London. Her Polish father had survived a Soviet Prisoner of War camp before arriving in Britain where he met his future wife. The family ran an electrical engineering business. Both Pia and her sister were educated in a private Jewish school.