About Mary

There’s Something About Mary

By Jackie Pisani

Kingswood Oxford is grateful for the steady guidance and commitment of its new Board Chair Mary S. Martin ’77, P ’17, ’20 who assumed the role of chair in July 2021. Previously, Martin served on the Board from July 1, 2000 to June 30, 2009, joining the Board again on July 1, 2016. Her deep ties to the school can be traced back to her mother, Grace Stephenson Martin, a 1951 Oxford School alumna who served on the Board when the schools were planning their merger and subsequently was named a Trustee Emeritus.

Martin is the executive director of the HA Vance Foundation, a private family foundation, whose focus is on organizations and programs in the Hartford area that support systemic education reform efforts and promote innovative approaches to urban education. She brings an impressive depth of finance and management knowledge from her 15-year career with United Technologies Corporation’s divisions: Otis Elevator Company, United Technologies Strategic Planning Department, and Carrier Corporation as vice president of strategic planning, vice president of consumer and specialty products, and director of business development among other senior leadership positions within the organization. Prior to her tenure at UTC, she worked at Bankers Trust in Los Angeles. Martin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Yale University (1981) and an MBA from the Harvard Business School (1988). She and her husband, Jeff Amell, live in West Hartford, Connecticut. Grace ’17 is living in New York City, and James ’20 is a rising junior at Connecticut College.

Q+A

We thought the best way to learn a little bit more about Martin was through this light-hearted Proust question-and-answer survey inspired by the book sitting on her nightstand.

What do you do for relaxation? Puzzles – crossword, acrostic, Wordle, Spelling Bee, jigsaw. If I had more time, I would spend time birdwatching and becoming a better duplicate bridge player.

What do you do for fun? Run with a group of women that’s been together since 2001, but it’s more than the exercise that’s important. We have many traditions around holidays, birthdays, and milestones that I cherish.

Read with two book groups Play bridge weekly Play family golf, tennis, and paddle tennis Get together with friends at college and graduate school reunions

Name your favorite meal Anything I don’t have to cook. My husband and children are excellent cooks, and I am fortunate that they all love to cook!

What are your favorite trips? Family vacations: 2012 Olympics, national parks (Glacier, Teton and Yellowstone), El Yunque National Forest, Kennebunkport Historical sites: Gettysburg, Normandy beaches

Major League ballparks Camping and hiking: Presidentials in White Mountains

Name the qualities that are important in a friend Listening skills, empathy, sense of humor, thoughtfulness

What important lessons did KO teach you? Time management skills, juggling many deadlines, writing (of course) Shoot for the stars It’s okay to be intellectually curious

Do you have any pet peeves? People finishing my sentences

Who are the KO teachers that inspired you? Warren Baird, English and journalism teacher Dick Caley, chemistry teacher Share your favorite KO memories Head Bob Lazear calling me to ask for the return of the KO sweatpants I was wearing in a picture in Playboy magazine Orienteering with Jim Goodwin out at the Reservoir Prefect trip to Cuttyhunk Island where Head Bob Lazear had a summer house

Favorite Broadway shows Come From Away Hello Dolly with Bette Midler

What books are on your nightstand? Deacon King Kong by James McBride Fourth volume in Marcel Proust’s seven-volume In Search of Lost Time Winslow Homer, a biography by William R. Cross, a college classmate

Q+A

Favorite quote

One quote I came across recently in a book I was reading made an impact on how to face the world. It was from a letter that Martha Washington wrote to her friend Mercy Otis Warren in Boston. Martha explained that she knew that Washington and his staff were doing everything they could “to make me as contented as possible.” Despite all her misgivings and regrets, she was “determined to be

cheerful and to be happy in whatever situation I may be, for I have ... learnt from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances; we carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wherever we go.”