Marilyn Shapiro’s career spans 45 years of public service, including more than 30 years in senior management positions with the Metropolitan Opera and Los Angeles Opera. Ms. Shapiro, retired from the Metropolitan Opera as Executive Director/External Affairs in 2000, having spent 25 years creating and providing management leadership for the Met’s modern development, planned giving, endowment and marketing programs, including directing two endowment campaigns and a capital improvements campaign.  Her responsibilities also encompassed governance, board recruitment and relations and serving as liaison to the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the National Council to coordinate membership programs.  From 1985 through the mid-nineties she managed the Met’s marketing program, in addition to development, and was instrumental in the ultimate creation of the tessitura data base program. Her Met achievements included establishing a working model for performing arts organizations on how best to coordinate marketing and development departments to maximize revenues. After leaving the Met, Ms. Shapiro served as a consultant to the Washington National Opera and other opera companies.  In 2003, she was invited by Placido Domingo to join the staff of LA Opera as Director of Institutional Resources. She retired from the Opera as Executive Vice President in June 2010. Under her leadership, the LA Opera significantly expanded Board and annual giving programs, especially in major and leadership gifts, including planned giving. She is now an arts consultant, specializing in membership, patron, major gifts, and leadership giving, planned giving, development department structure and governance. Clients have included Los Angeles Opera, Opera America, Dallas Opera, San Diego Opera, Opera Orchestra of New York, Opera Company of Philadelphia and Gotham Chamber Opera. She serves on the board of Los Angeles Opera, where as a board member, she provides development, marketing and governance counsel. Prior to joining the Metropolitan Opera in 1975, Ms. Shapiro served as Chief of Staff to Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, as a consultant with the noted author, Alvin Toffler, and as an Assistant to Mayor John Lindsay. She also served on the staff of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund landmark study on the performing arts, chaired by John D. Rockefeller III. Ms. Shapiro received a BA degree from Wellesley College in 1962, with the highest honors, and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and an MA in Public Law and Government from Columbia University in 1965.