Mari Ellen Reynolds Loijens

Loijens earned her fundraising chops early. At age 24, she gave up an aspiring career as a scientist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (she holds a genetics degree from Mount Holyoke College) and was hired as a fundraiser at a downtrodden all-girls high school in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. By the time she left two years later, she had raised enough money to build a computer lab and repaint the school and re-carpet with remnants she found discarded at the nearby convention center. She had a range of senior level fundraising positions in New York, including director of major gifts and planned giving at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In California, Loijens raised millions of dollars for Second Harvest Food Bank in Silicon Valley before moving to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in 2004. She served as president of the San Jose Junior League in 2009.