FEARLESS
LEADER She’s swum with sharks—both in the water and in the corporate world—and now Interim President Marge Connelly is putting her love of a challenge to work for Longwood
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hen you’ve swum with sharks, everything else is easy. Back in early 2010, Longwood Interim President Marge Connelly, an inveterate world traveler, was working in South Africa in her capacity as global chief operating officer for Londonbased Barclaycard. While traveling through Cape Town, she decided to embark on a cagediving photo safari among great white sharks. “Basically you’re in a cage, and you have to keep your fingers in because [the sharks] bump the cage. You are two inches from them,” Connelly said. From the tour boat above, her guides chummed the water with bloody fish bits, trolling a large hunk of tuna on a giant hook for good measure. Packs of great whites converged on the area like an arsenal of heatseeking torpedoes, frenzying around the shark cage as they attacked the fish meat. “So that was intense,” she said, without a whiff of hyperbole. Connelly, who became Longwood University’s interim president July 1 and served as acting president in June, is a woman unafraid of challenges; she excitedly greets new experiences. “It’s easy to have energy when you’re doing something that’s truly exciting and fulfilling—
and that’s what I believe this job is going to be for me,” said Connelly. She replaces Patrick Finnegan, who stepped down from the presidency for health reasons in May. Formerly rector of Longwood’s Board of Visitors and a longtime member of that body, Connelly brings to her new role an impressive history of international business leadership and financial expertise. In a little more than a decade, she worked her way from a customerservice job to one of the highest-ranking executive positions at Fortune 500 credit card company Capital One. She then served as chief operating officer at Wachovia Securities before moving to London to work for Barclaycard. She and her partner of nearly 20 years, Julie Christopher, live in Keswick, Va., and have two grown children: Carolyn West, 24, who works in operations risk management for Capital One; and Ryan West, 32, a high-school history teacher in Tucson, Ariz. Connelly and Christopher, the retired former commissioner of the Virginia Department for the Aging, are ardent travelers. They’ve trekked through more than 20 countries in just the last few years, snorkeling with whale sharks off the Philippines coastline and witnessing the annual Great
Andrea Dailey
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