Penny Low, Member of Parliament (Singapore)

Penny has traversed more than 50 countries and is one of the 34 founding members of the New Asian Leaders by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum. She is also honoured as one of the 237 (out of 8,000 worldwide) original founding members of the prestigious Forum of Global Young Leaders (FYGL). She has also been appointed by Prof Klaus Schwab, Chairman & Founder of the WEF at a Davos meeting, as the official link between the YGL and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs.

Ms Penny Low was the youngest elected female Member of Parliament in Singapore, representing the Pasir Ris-Punggol Group Representation Constituency in 2001. She is the Chairperson of the Government Parliamentary Committees (GPC) for Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts, and also serves on the GPC for Ministry of Finance, Trade and Industry.

Penny sits on many national committees - she is a Governing Council member of the Singapore Institute of Management (which runs 2 large universities). She is a labour Union Adviser, an Adviser to the Youth Biz Exco, on the Advisory Panel to the Small and Medium Enterprise Outreach Group, the Vice-Chairman of the NorthEast Community Development Council, Vice-Chairman of the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council & Town Development Taskforce, the Chairperson of CaseTrust Advisory Council (national accreditation body), a member of the Parliamentary Chinese Community Liaison Committee and the Equestrian Federation of Singapore (EFS)and the is a chairman and member of many inter-parliamentary and friendship groups across the globe.

Penny has been in the financial services industry since 1995. She founded the Planners-Hub Consultancy, focusing on training, consultancy and personal planning. Penny lectures in tertiary programmes conducted by Singapore Institute of Management-Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (SIM-RMIT), trains mature financial advisors in the region and co-written syllabus for the Certified Financial Planner as well as the Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) & Chartered Life Underwriters (CLU) designation. With a wealth of experience in financial planning, Penny was invited to sit on the Global Voice Editorial Advisory Board of Financial Planning Association (USA) since 1999, and the ISO/Technical Committee 222 on Personal Financial Planning, as well as the Board of Governors for the Insurance and Financial Services Practitioners of Singapore’s (Ifpas) Fellow Chartered Financial Practitioners’ (FChFP) accreditation programme.

Prior to that, Penny began her career as a current affairs television producer-researcher, and took a break to document her more than a year long hitchhiking journey around the world.

More recently in 2006, she founded the Social Innovation Park Ltd (SIP), a non-profit organization promoting thought leadership and social entrepreneurship in Singapore and beyond. It has experienced accelerated growth to become the leading social enterprise (SE) in Singapore that has motivated a 8-part TV series, SE courses in at least 2 tertiary institutes and numerous partnerships with the private and people sector. It has also prompted the public sector revamp of their engagement with the SE sector.