About

Jenna Rowell

Director, Rural Development

Local First Arizona

An Arizona native from the Verde Valley, Jenna now leads Rural Development for Local First Arizona. Local First is the largest coalition of locally owned businesses in North America, the federally designated Arizona Rural Development Council, and founder and operator of the Arizona Economic Resource Center for rural and tribal communities.

Jenna joined Local First in May 2022 after a 25-year corporate career for major employers in Arizona and Texas, including Arizona Public Service, Honeywell and BHP Copper. She has extensive community engagement, public relations, project management, issues management and crisis communications experience. In her current role she oversees the Northern Arizona Good Jobs Network, a five-county rural workforce development collaboration, facilitates a Rural Funders Network of public and private sector philanthropists and investors, organizes the annual Arizona Rural Policy Forum, and engages in a range of community and economic development programs and projects across rural Arizona. This includes the Fuerza Local business accelerator with more than 75 Verde Valley graduates and for which the City of San Luis earned an AAED Golden Prospector Award. 

Jenna has two bachelor's degrees from Northern Arizona University and an MBA from the University of Houston. She is a governor appointee to the Workforce Arizona Council, an alumna of the Tempe Leadership program and a prior board member of Local First Arizona and board chair of the Tempe Chamber of Commerce, the Phoenix chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators and Ad2Houston.