About Penny

I moved to Newport, RI when I was twelve and attended Thompson Middle School and Rogers High School, graduating in 1999.  At Rogers, I was a multi-sport athlete; playing soccer, tennis, track & field and basketball.  I am a proud Viking and organized the Class of 1999’s 20th and 25th year reunions.

For college, I attended Brown University in Providence, RI.  I majored in Public Policy & American Institutions with a concentration on Education Policy.  At Brown I was involved in a variety of student organizations including a group advocating for more stringent gun control and a group of students volunteering in the Rhode Island Training School for youth.  I became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and chaired the University’s Greek Council in my senior year.

During the summers from middle school through college, I worked in retail sales and waitressing jobs.

After college, I returned home to Newport and worked as a grant administrator for a nonprofit organization providing mental health services to teenagers and their families. I decided to move to Boston in 2005 and worked for five years in major donor fundraising for a youth development organization serving Boston’s neighborhoods.

In 2010, I enrolled at Boston University’s School of Management to obtain an MBA with the goal of adding financial analysis skills to my toolkit. After graduation, I was hired by a Boston-based community bank to train in commercial lending. I have now worked at the bank for 14 years and I enjoy our group’s work underwriting loans to affordable housing and other publicly funded real estate projects.* During my career I have served as a co-chair of the company’s sustainability initiative and also served on the board of a nonprofit advocating for criminal justice reform in the juvenile system.

In 2020, shortly after the birth of our second child, my husband and I moved from Boston back to Aquidneck Island.  We reside in Newport and both of our children attend Pell Elementary School. 

Since returning to Newport, I have passionately followed local issues including Newport Public Schools.  From 2021-2022, I served on the City committee that developed and recommended the Two-Tier Residential Tax Program.  I served as a board member of Involve Newport, a 501c3 organization formerly known as Alliance for a Livable Newport. For the past two years, I have been working as a board member of Newport Little League, which I really love doing.

*All opinions expressed during the course of my campaign are my personal opinions and do not represent in any way a position of my employer.