After reading my post, I realize I didn't word my question correctly.
I'm looking to do content personalization in a module based on a role. Everyone who has access to the tab will have access to the module, but I need different content displayed in the module based on the user's role. That's what I meant when I asked about roles and personalization. I hope this clears it up.
I know I could have multiple modules, each with the different content, but under the model we are using, each portal can have a different number of roles and the admin overhead gets to be very big.
aaron