Described as a risk taker with a passion for public policy, Penelope Rowe is driven by conceptualizing new approaches to thorny issues. Working with a Board of Directors and dedicated staff colleagues, she leads the Community Sector Council of Newfoundland and Labrador (CSC). She provides leadership in forging new directions and building innovative programs to provide infrastructure support to the community sector. She is entrepreneur, researcher, planner and promoter of the community sector and a tenacious advocate for the role of the community sector. With a particular interest in the linkages between social and economic development and the role of the social economy in fostering regional development she believes that seeing issues at a grassroots level is fundamental to conceptualizing new directions.

Responding to the sector’s desire to find ways to demonstrate the value of its work, CSC recently instigated an intensive pilot project to explore the merit of the Social Return on Investment methodology in the Newfoundland and Labrador context. This work was carried out with the new economics foundation in the UK and 12 community groups and one government program with the financial support and engagement of the provincial government and ACOA.

Rowe was the author of the Atlantic Regional Report of the National Survey of the Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations. Rowe was Director of the Values Added Community University Research Alliance (CURA) and co-director of the Atlantic Social Economy Research program hosted by Mount St. Vincent University. She has considerable experience with Federal and Provincial agencies and advisory bodies including: Chair of the Workers Compensation Commission of Newfoundland and Labrador; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (she was the first Atlantic Canadian and non academic to serve as vice president); the National Executive of the Governor General’s Leadership Conference the national Council of Welfare. As a driving force in the creation of the province’s Strategic Social Plan she was principal author of the seminal report, Investing in People and Communities: A Framework for Social Development.

Penny is a member of the Provincial Council of the NL Rural Secretariat; a Director of the Atlantic Council for Community and Social Enterprise (ACCSE) and the Social Enterprise Council of Canada (SECC); Imagine Canada’s Standards Council, and Volunteer Canada’s Volunteer Centre Advisory Committee. She holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and is a member of the Order of Canada.