Marion Howard

About Marion Howard

Marion Howard graduated from Dartmouth College with a major in Art History. Before suspending her professional career to raise her family, she worked for two leading retail organizations in New York City as a merchant and business systems specialist. At Macy's, Marion completed rigorous merchandise training and then transitioned into the systems side of the business as digital advances began transforming retail. During 7 years at the regional disruptor Century 21 Department Stores, Marion worked with the founder and senior management to harness all forms of data and technology to improve business and sat on the executive committee. Over the past decade, Marion has been deeply involved with a number of community and not for profit organizations committed to social and educational advancement. The common threads to these endeavors have been community building, constituent engagement and fundraising. At New York's Village Community School, she transformed messaging in order to dramatically boost contributions to the fundraising auction, annual fund and Capital Campaign. While serving on that organization's Community Service committee 10 years ago, Marion initiated a Green Bag program to convert families to reusable bags as an early adopter. She became the Chair of the school’s $1.2mm annual fund 5 years ago and joined the VCS Board of Trustees during 2018. Marion has been the Chair of the West 11th Street Block Association for 11 years, leading a multi-faceted effort to resuscitate neighborhood spirit and build a sense of community within Greenwich Village. Marion enjoys boating, antiquing, theater, art and design, and treasures time spent at her Boothbay home. She and her husband support a variety of Maine organizations – including Oceanswide, MITA, Maine Community Foundation, and Colby College. Her son Jack is a freshman at Wesleyan, and her daughter Millie is a high school junior. Husband Mark is a Colby ’85 and works in Research for a European bank when not volunteering on the Boards of a variety of education / research related institutions.