District Governor Nominee - Lisa Norwood

Lisa Norwood has been a Rotarian since 2006 when she was sponsored by the late Sue Costa to become a member of the Rochester Rotary Club. Within six months, she began serving as Sergeant-At-Arms and joined the International Service Committee (ISC). It wasn’t long before she became a member of the club’s board of directors and chaired the ISC while jumping at any chance to participate in service projects and fellowship with other Rotarians.

 

With young children at home, Lisa began hosting international visitors through the Group Study Exchange Program, the Milt Matthews DGE Hospitality Program, and Rotary Friendship Exchange (RFE) as a way of expanding her children’s exposure to the wider world. When they were old enough to be left at home, she began participating on outbound RFE teams herself, immensely enjoying her visits to Nova Scotia, the Lake District of England and Albuquerque, NM. She currently serves on the District RFE Committee where she is instrumental in identifying new districts with which to do RFEs.

 

During her 35-year career on the University of Rochester’s River Campus, she had many opportunities to work with college-aged students. Therefore, it’s not surprising that she was influential in restarting a Rotaract Club there in 2018 and helping the UR Engineers Without Borders chapter apply in 2014 for a District Simplified Grant with the Rochester Rotary Club and the Latino Rotary Club for a 3-year water purification project in the Dominican Republic.

 

In 2016, District 7120 launched an initiative to develop new Rotary Clubs in underserved areas. One of those areas was southwest Rochester where Lisa lives and works. Excited to have a club in her backyard, she assisted Scottsville Rotarian Glenn Balch to gather enough members to have the club chartered in January 2018. In 2020, she switched her membership to the Rotary Club of Rochester Southwest and served as its president for two years in 2021-2023 and is currently the club’s secretary and membership chair. From 2017-2020, she also served as Assistant Governor for Area 14.

 

Lisa retired as Assistant Dean for the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Rochester in 2021. She continues to live in the 19th Ward of the City of Rochester with her husband Wade, who is the CEO of Common Ground Health. Her now adult children include Rotarian Stephen Christopher who lives in Los Angeles, CA with his fiancée Eboni Robinson, and Julia who resides in Charlotte, NC. Lisa enjoys cycling, hiking, traveling, scrapbooking, reading, and quilting.