President and CEO, America's Promise - The Alliance for Youth
Marguerite Sallee was named President and CEO of America’s Promise—The Alliance for Youth in September 2004. America’s Promise was founded after the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future in 1997, where Presidents Bush, Carter, Clinton and Ford, with Nancy Reagan representing President Reagan, challenged the country to make children and youth a national priority. Retired General Colin L. Powell is founding chairman, and the current chair is Alma J. Powell. The organization’s mission is to mobilize people from every sector of American life to build the character and competence of youth by fulfilling Five Promises in their lives: caring adults; safe places with structured activities; a healthy start; marketable skills through effective education; and opportunities to volunteer.
Prior to joining America’s Promise, Ms. Sallee served as Special Assistant to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander as well as Staff Director for the Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families. Her focus in the 108th Congress was education, health care, social welfare, and the challenges of working families, especially military families.
During her 30-year career, Ms. Sallee has been both an entrepreneur and a public servant. In the private sector for 20 years, she has been CEO of three companies – a start-up, a roll-up, and a turn-around. The start-up, Corporate Family Solutions, she founded in 1987 with Lamar Alexander and Bob Keeshan, television’s Captain Kangaroo, to provide more and better child care for working parents through employer sponsorship. It became the nation’s largest provider of workplace childcare, and she took the company public in 1997 (NASDAQ: BFAM). Ms. Sallee retired as CEO of the company, now called Bright Horizons Family Solutions, in 1999, and recently rejoined the board. The company is a $500 million enterprise employing more than 20,000 people and serving over 300 corporate clients at over 450 childcare centers in five countries. It has three times been named one of Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”
Prior to founding the child care company, Ms. Sallee served in Tennessee state government where she developed and led then-Gov. Lamar Alexander’s statewide four-year “Healthy Children Initiative.” She later served in the cabinet of Gov. Alexander as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services.
Ms. Sallee has received numerous awards and honors, including regional Entrepreneur of the Year, awarded by Ernst & Young. In 1994, she was named the first woman to chair the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. In addition to Bright Horizons, she is a member of the board of Saks, Inc. (NYSE: SKS), chairman of the board of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), and a trustee of Washington’s Arena Stage, a leader in the regional theater movement. Ms. Sallee is a member of the Board of Visitors at Duke University’s Terry Sanford School of Public Policy, and serves on the advisory boards of Avondale Partners, Nashville, Tenn., and HLM Venture Partners, Boston, Mass., both investment banking firms.
An undergraduate alumna of Duke University, she also holds a master’s degree from Austin Peay State University. She has two sons and daughters-in-law and enjoys golf, travel, hiking, and fly-fishing.
She looks lovely .. and has an WOW impressive bio -- happiness for Mort.