10 the making of Bennington’s
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P r e s i d e n t, M a r i k o S i lv e r
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the summer of 2001, at a cocktail party in Manhattan to benefit the National Endowment for the Arts, a man was taking in a nearby conversation. It was the kind of small talk that might have been overheard at any number of parties in New York that evening—a young woman back in the city after three years abroad—but that’s not what caught this man’s attention. The expat whom the conversation revolved around was Mariko Silver. Guests were discussing that she had just returned from Bangkok, where she had been working as a business strategist for a publisher of international travel magazines. She had a history degree from Yale, a master’s in science and technology policy from the University of Sussex, in England, and now, after a year in Southeast Asia, was deciding between a finance job in New York, or business school. She seemed to be leaning toward the latter. W i n t e r 2013–14 • 17