Dr. Mary Leary is a change agent who believes that we can harness the power of people, partnerships and technology emboldened by entrepreneurial concepts and social justice to make the world a better place for everyone. Her thirty year career spans a dual senior leadership path in both the private and public sectors across the technology, transportation, gerontology, community-services, education, disability, federal program management, academic, and business enterprise solutions sectors. Having joined Easter Seals in late 2007, Dr. Leary is leading both the Transportation Group and launching a new department in business innovation that is creating services and solutions in brain health, care transitions, mobility, transportation and youth transition, among others. She has built a management framework for idea generation and pipeline development that leverages social networking, social entrepreneurship, and private sector partnerships and launched the Easter Seals Brain Health Center.

Dr. Leary’s coalition building and federal systems change experience includes almost ten years leading various initiatives and centers for the United We Ride federal interagency program such as Easter Seals Project ACTION, the National Center on Senior Transportation and several Open Government Civic engagement projects. The open government projects tested and developed useful practices in online dialogues designed to engage broad stakeholder input to crucial and pressing policy areas. Dr. Leary joined Easter Seals from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Administration on Aging where she served as the Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Aging (AoA). Prior to her career change to serve in the public sector, Mary was a sales and marketing executive in the information technology industry where she managed multimillion dollar sales and marketing account management teams working with major corporations and federal government agencies at Compaq Computer and Digital Equipment Corporation. Mary’s education and academic experience includes being an Adjunct Professor in statistics and public policy analysis, community adult-learning, organizational informatics research projects and analyzing cross-sector systems change. She holds a Bachelor of Science from James Madison University; a Masters of Administrative Science from Johns Hopkins University; a Gerontology Masters Certificate from George Mason University School of Nursing and Health Science; and a Doctorate from George Mason University, School of Public Policy.