Catamount Nation: The Connector

Penrose Jackson has spent her career helping people and organizations find each other.

Penrose Jackson ’70 graduated from UVM at a politically and socially tumultuous time in our nation’s history. She says the massacre at Kent State in May of her senior year, in which four unarmed college students were killed and nine injured, colored her final days on campus and her outlook as a new graduate.

“Exams were canceled. We went to graduation. Some people wore armbands. I don't remember if I did. We just left. There was no feeling of celebration, and it was very, very hard,” says Jackson.

She saw that her community needed connection and healing and made a promise to herself that she would make a difference. From a young age, she made it her life’s work to improve both UVM and the greater Burlington community, which she sees as mutually dependent and indelibly intertwined. Her first accomplishment was no pedestrian task— she was hired as the planner and first director of the Church Street Marketplace.

“I don't know where I got the inkling that I could possibly do that. My husband and I had lined a cedar closet—that was my construction experience—but I built a $6 million facility, which would be $35-40 million today, on time and on budget.”

Over the course of the project, she developed a knowledge of the people and systems that could help her accomplish more. She set her sights on improving the health of the Burlington community, particularly the most vulnerable populations. She served for 15 years as the Community Health Improvement director at the UVM Medical Center and is now CEO of the Vermont Public Health Institute. She has served on the boards of many nonprofits, including the YMCA, the United Way, the UVM Medical Center, and many others, tackling issues from food insecurity and homelessness to mental health and the opiate crisis.

"We can only be fully healthy individually if we're all fully healthy as a community, and we can't ever do that alone. I have spent most of my life helping people and organizations find each other,” she says.

As president of the UVM Alumni Association, Jackson shepherded two hallmark initiatives that opened the door to more alumni connecting with the university in meaningful ways. She put an emphasis on programs and outreach that engaged all alumni and created the first Alumni Association Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. She also led the charge to plan and open the UVM Alumni House.

“I came to appreciate the whole concept of coming home to a place where you could always feel welcome, that you didn't have to go to a classroom or a gymnasium, that there was a home-like place where you could feel a part of the university and connected with it.”

Those who know Jackson personally and professionally have called her a visionary leader, a quintessential public servant, someone who can break down barriers. It’s been claimed that she must know everyone in Vermont and always knows who to call to accomplish a goal.

“I show up, ask to do something, and I do it as well as I can. I think that's what I can bring, and hopefully some perspective and some intelligence. When I graduated in 1970, again, it was a tough, tough time and a very low time in our country. I was thinking about what I would do when I grew up and I said, well, ‘I can stay outside and I can have my placards and I can protest, or maybe I could get inside and try to influence from the inside.’ Not a bad idea.”