Maria Lilly is Principal and founder of MJ Lilly Associates, LLC. With more than 25 years of experience, she has managed a full complement of marketing communications functions from corporate identity and advertising to employee communications and corporate responsibility programs. Before founding MJ Lilly Associates, Maria spent three years as Executive Vice President and General Manager at Edelman Worldwide and two years as Managing Director of the corporate and marketing group at Gavin Anderson & Company. Earlier, she spent seven years in corporate positions first as a Vice President at The First Boston Corporation and then two years as the Director of Communications at Furman Selz Incorporated. Maria is a cum laude graduate of the State University of New York at Albany with a B.A. in Rhetoric and Communications. Active in professional and civic organizations, she has served on the Advisory Board to the Ageno Business School at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, the marketing committee of MCC Theater, and has provided pro-bono services to an array of marketing and communications industry non-profits. Maria has also been quoted in several business journals and has been a speaker at Institute for International Research marketing conferences.