Penny is currently the Virginia Program Director for Red Wine & Blue and CEO of Penny Wise Gateway, LLC which provides leadership training and consulting.  She is author of “A TIME TO PROTEST”, Leadership Lessons from My Father Who Survived the Segregated South for 99 Years.  The book was published February 2020 just prior to the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent worldwide protest to follow.

The book shares the many local stories of protest Penny’s father shared with all his children on an ongoing basis which helped to mold their work ethic, drive for justice, education, political involvement and to help the underserved.  The book underscores the many ways to protest: education, voting, self-respect, hard work--all that he and his wife instilled in their 10 children.  However, the main theme is Standing up and speaking out for what is just and right.  Penny believes “In order to be treated as first-class citizen, one must act as a first-class citizen.” 

She has served her community by volunteering during the Barack Obama 2008 campaign as Grassroots Community Organizer for Franklin, Henry and Pittsylvania Counties and helped turn Virgina Blue and helped provide the biggest congressional upset in 2008.  Penny served as the local, state, and national Presidential Delegate in 2008. In 2019 she helped turn Richmond blue as the Southwest Program Director for the Virginia League of Conservation Voters. 

Following in her Father’s foot step, she served on the Franklin County School Board for two terms after being denied an opportunity to teach in the Franklin County School System even though she had just retired from IBM after 25 years of service as a Delivery Project Executive, a proud graduate of Hampton University with a mathematics degree, and an MBA from Duke University, along with taking the educational courses from UVA through the Roanoke Learning center.   

As the only black on the 8-person board, she was able to galvanize the community and lead the effort for the school board to add the confederate battle flag as a hate symbol to their dress code which means the confederate battle flag is not allowed on the Franklin County school system’s campus.