Founding President & CEO, National Parks of New York Harbor
For over 50 years, beginning her career in the early days of New York Magazine, Marie Salerno has held executive leadership roles and consultancies at major cultural, educational, publishing institutions and enterprises, including the New York Public Library, Jacques D’Amboise’s National Dance Institute, Lincoln Center, and Thirteen/WNET.
Most recently as Founding President/CEO of the nonprofit National Parks of New York Harbor and its Federal Hall Conservancy, sanctioned through partnership agreements with the U.S. Department of Interior and National Park Service, her mission was to unleash the educational power of New York City’s heritage through original, authentic, and provocative scholarship, and to interpret and illuminate its unheralded history.
She commissioned award-winning and illustrious performers, pundits, playwrights, and authors to create harbor wide site-specific imaginative programs, installations, and activities through the prism of America’s first urban national park (Gateway National Recreation) and Federal Hall National Memorial, the site on Wall Street commemorated by the most prolific First Congress that established our government, inaugurated George Washington, and drafted the Bill of Rights.
In 1998, she spearheaded a consortium of 200 entities in partnership with the municipal government to commemorate the Greater New York Centennial through the New York Historical Society.
For America250, celebrated in 2026, she was appointed Commissioner to the Governor’s New York State Commission and held positions on several Congressional planning committees.
