Thumbnail-Mary Downs

The Top 10 things you should know about Mary Downs....

1.She is the youngest of 3 children.  There are 2000 pictures of her sister, 1000 of her brother, and 2 of her.  2. While Mary was the yearbook editor at Appleton East, she learned to forge the principal's signature, just in case there was some type of yearbook-deadline-emergency.  She’s not telling if she ever actually used it.... 3.While Mary was an undergraduate at UW-Stevens Point, she majored in Managerial Accounting and played competitive trivia with The Flying Zupan Brothers.  That was before the internet - that was real trivia! 4. She earned two graduate degrees at UW-Oshkosh, in Educational Leadership and Counseling.  Clearly, she’s still trying to figure out if I am right or left-brained. 5. Mary spent many years at AAL/Thrivent.   Highlights of her time there included being involved in the creation of the child learning center, going to UNICEF to receive an award for our program to support nursing mothers, and being at a volunteer event in Minot North Dakota where several people just walked right into the pool at the Holiday Inn.  Fortunately someone from the North Dakota Water Rescue team was sitting next to her.  6. The highlight of her time at ThedaCare included working on the Community Mental Health Summit, forming the NEW Mental Health Connection, and playing a key role in the creation of Catalpa Health. 7. Mary recently joined FVTC as the leader of the Foundation and Community Relations.   She needed to feed her soul and focus on collaborating to improve people’s lives. 8. Mary is an only parent with two sons. “Only” is another way to say Widow –her husband died two years ago after a 6 year battle with cancer.  She has 2 sons, one studying strategic communications at TCU, the other at Appleton North.   She also has a dog and a cat.  At first, she thought she was a dog person.  Now she thinks she is a cat person.  But not a crazy cat lady.  That’s entirely different.  9. Mary loves to travel, she loves to buy jewelry, and she loves to buy jewelry while traveling.  She thought that traveling would help her cross things off my bucket list, but it just makes her want to add new items to it.    10. Her Volunteer/Service activities include: CHAPs Academy board member, Leadership Fox Cities NAMI, Appleton North and Wave Swim club events, and now, ROTARY!!