MARCY SYMS

Founding Trustee & President, Sy Syms Foundation

Marcy Syms helped create the ERA Coalition in 2013 with the goal of passing the long-stalled Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution that would guard against discrimination based on gender. She later chaired the coalition as well as the Fund for Women’s Equality, spurring the passage of the amendment in Nevada, Illinois and Virginia, bringing the total number of states that have ratified it to 38, the necessary two-thirds majority. (It still requires legislation in Congress to overcome procedural barriers before it can become law.)

In January 2021, Syms and other board members left the coalition to start the ERA Project at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, a think tank that researches women’s equality under the law.

In 1983, at the age of 32, she took the helm of Syms Corp., the family-owned New York- based discount clothing retailer that her father, Sy Syms, founded 25 years earlier. In doing so, she became the youngest woman at the time to serve as president of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange; 15 years later, she became CEO. She shepherded the company to become a 50-store chain in 16 states until it filed for bankruptcy and closed all its stores in 2011.

Ms. Syms also serves on the board of WAPPP (Women and Public Policy Program) at Harvard Kennedy School, Sy Syms Foundation (President & Founding Trustee), National Public Radio (NPR) Foundation, Macaulay Honors School at CUNY, Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University (Founding Trustee), Advisory Board of Have Art Will Travel, and on the Leadership Council, Tanenbaum.