WAC Magazine

August 2013

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L eadership in motion Marilyn on the golf course, left, and at work within sight of the WAC. the Board of Governors in 2007. Now, she becomes the fourth woman to chair the WAC Board of Governors. A few minutes earlier she joked about her handicap. "It's a proud 26," she said approaching the second tee box. As the incoming Chairwoman of the Board of Governors, Marilyn brings a passion for the WAC that came to prominence on an early spring evening in 2002 at a meeting about WeeWACs. With emotions running high and the Club on the verge of closing its child care center, Marilyn stood to speak. At the time her daughter, Kady, still attended WeeWACs. "I just said, 'Hey you guys, they're trying to help us here. They're trying to solve the problem.'" That meeting and her follow-up work on a WeeWACs task force drew the attention of Vice President Operations Bill Cohen. "I still remember it," Bill says of the night Marilyn helped quell a rowdy crowd. "That was a very controversial meeting. She was a great voice of reason. She wanted to find a solution, and she exhibited great leadership skills." Marilyn joined the House Committee later that year and 32 | Washington Athletic Club Magazine | AUGUST 2013 A business leader Marilyn joined the WAC in early 2001, a few months after moving to Seattle with her family. She was married at the time and had two young children. Thomas, now 18, graduated from Issaquah High School this past June. Fourteen-year-old Kady starts at the school this fall. Marilyn developed a renewed commitment to fitness four years ago, around the time her marriage was ending. She became a regular attendee of Power Lunch, a midday group training class, and found herself pushing her physical limits further than she ever had. "I knew I needed to move in a different direction," she recalls in an interview from her 19th floor office in Rainier Tower, just a block from the WAC. "I started engaging the resources I had at the WAC differently and everything came together." Marilyn is the head of Marsh's Seattle office. A New York native, she moved to the Bay Area when she was eight. She then joined the global insurance broker straight out of Arizona State University

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