PDG Jennifer Scott has lived and breathed Rotary for a long time. First as a Interact and Rotaract member and then joined the Rotary Club of Central Blue Mountains in 1996.

Article by PDG Jennifer Scott, 2025-27 RI Director

Jennifer and husband PDG Ian, live in the beautiful Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, surrounded by world heritage listed national parks.

Jennifer has held leadership positions and served as District Governor in 2007-08, been a trainer at Institutes, a training leader and moderator at International Assembly and served on several committees.

Her focus in life reflects the vision of the Rotary Foundation: advancing world understanding, goodwill and peace through health, education, and the alleviation of poverty. Together with Ian, they have led volunteers in Cambodia and a vocational training team to Mongolia, upskilling judges and social workers in family mediation and conflict management skills.

Professionally, Jennifer practiced as a lawyer for 30 years, specialising in environment and planning law. In recent years, Jennifer has taken up trail running and hiking, having walked the Camino Frances in 2019 and later this year plans to walk the Camino Le Puys in France. She also loves cooking, good red wine and spending time with her two daughters and three grandchildren.

She is enthusiastic about her upcoming role with a vision for the zone to be relevant and have a diverse membership that engages the community. Jennifer believes that our vision doesn’t fundamentally change, but as the world changes, we need to change how we fulfil it. And we can only achieve our vision with innovative and vibrant clubs.

So, what are the barriers? Jennifer chalks it up to the decline in membership. Simply, our product is no longer appealing. People join our clubs, but don’t stay because many of our clubs do not reflect the experience they promote. Jennifer states she didn’t join her Rotary club to do administration - she joined to make a difference.

“To be able to make clubs more inviting we need to streamline our governance, structure, and processes, so that members have more time to engage in meaningful projects,” says Jennifer.

“What will it take to foster that vision? Teamwork and tenacity. Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group of clubs to achieve a common goal and building partnerships with other organisations.

We need the tenacity to think big and NOT GIVE UP! Rotary receives the greatest recognition from government and the public when together we take on and see through to the end impactful projects.”

Her role is to keep members and clubs focused on the end game, to promote good governance and advocate for public recognition, and help shape a global contemporary organisation.

What will the next five years look like?

We may see the last polio case by the end of 2026 and redirecting resources to our next global focus. With the help of the regionalisation pilot our membership will strengthen and be more engaged and diverse….and Rotary will be known as the premier membership organisation for corporates, governments and people seeking purposeful volunteer opportunities.