The out-of-towner

It was never about me. It’s about the people who are always going to be here and the people who poured everything they have into the town.

— Mary Mann

Mary Mann is leaving her position as executive director of RiverCenter with the same class and professionalism that she came into the organization with two years ago.

In a typically self-effacing, remark she described what she did in the borough as "nothing."

She could not be further from the truth.

Mann came into a mature organization at a crossroads and helped to ensure that it took the right path.

She did that not by creating a grand plan with herself as the centerpiece, but by letting the merchants and landlords that make up RiverCenter know that they came first, had to come first, and that they, not she, controlled the fate of the downtown alliance.

Organizations, like people, go through phases, and RiverCenter was fortunate to have Mann come along to help guide it through a particular difficult time.

When Mann came in as executive director for River-Center, it had, by any definition, been a rousing success. And becoming a success is not easy, so the membership was rightly proud of itself for the accomplishment.

One of the things Mann did was help make sure the stakeholders in the organization didn’t rest on their laurels. She understood that she was leading an organization that easily could have decided to look back on the glories of its past, and she helped keep it focused on its future.

She says she didn’t have a vision, but that would probably be one of the few things she was wrong about in her tenure.

She had a vision, not for herself, but for the members of RiverCenter.

Talk to them now, and you’ll find out just how much she succeeded.

If you pressed Mary Mann on how she was able to do her job as well as she did, she would probably try to duck out by telling you the whole thing was luck. Maybe it was, but if it was, all the luck belonged to River-Center.