A Passion for Serving Others

Mary Campion began her career at Kennedy Krieger. Now, she gives to the Institute to ensure its future.

It wasn’t long after Mary Campion started working at Kennedy Krieger Institute in the late 1980s that she realized she’d landed in an incredible place to work.

Dr. Gary Goldstein, the Institute’s president and CEO from 1988 to 2018, had just arrived, and “it was an extremely transformational time,” Campion says. Kennedy Krieger was expanding, in both services and space, and Dr. Goldstein’s leadership, she says, ensured the success of each new endeavor.

“Good institutional vision is essential to philanthropy,” explains Campion, who worked in the Institute’s department of corporate and foundation relations, now the Office of Philanthropy, for about five years. It was the start of a long and successful career in fundraising. “I learned as much about donors and philanthropists as I did about academic medicine,” she says. “It was like a Petri dish for me”—so much knowledge and information in one place.

Campion also discovered her passion for serving others. She quickly realized that at Kennedy Krieger, she had the opportunity to make an incredible difference in people’s lives by raising funds to support cutting-edge medical care and research. She transformed the Institute’s fundraising department, leading a multimillion- dollar campaign and co-founding the annual Festival of Trees, the largest holiday-themed fundraising extravaganza on the East Coast.

Campion credits the success of her efforts to the Institute’s leadership and incredible team of philanthropy professionals, and the Baltimore community, “which responded to our fundraising appeals because of the mission of the Institute and the quality of its leadership, which continues to this day. It was a wonderful symbiosis, and wonderful work.”

When Campion left Kennedy Krieger, she told Dr. Goldstein that if she were ever in the position to donate money, she would give to Kennedy Krieger. And so, when she learned a few years ago about the new Gary W. Goldstein Research Innovation Endowment Fund, which supports promising research on neurodevelopmental and related disorders, she decided at once that she would support it.

“That research is so critically important to advancements in medical care,” Campion says. “If I could have invented a gift, that’s exactly what it would have been.” – LT

To learn more about giving to Kennedy Krieger, use the QR code or visit: KennedyKrieger.org/Foundation