Mary McEachron – Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel, Buck Institute for Research on Aging
Mary McEachron is a leader in many ways. McEachron currently holds the position of Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. McEachron has made the most of her role at the Buck Institute and has contributed to making this the world renowned facility that it is today. Prior to her existing position, McEachron was making her mark on the world as a visionary and leader.
McEachron graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and started her legal career at the firm of Orrick Herrington in San Francisco, where she became that firm’s first female litigation partner. While at Orrick, McEachron was one of a team of trial attorneys – including the Marin County Counsel and the State Attorney General’s Office – who fought to keep Beryl Buck’s trust for charitable purposes in Marin County from being broken. On behalf of Mrs. Buck’s executor, she then developed and presented the proposal for Major Project funding for the Institute. Indeed, McEachron’s successful campaign for Major Project perpetual funding was, in the words of a Marin County Supervisor, “choreographed like the invasion of Normandy.”
McEachron left her prestigious law partnership to become the Institute’s first employee and executive director, where her job became her passion. During her ten-year successful effort to obtain permits and permanent financing for the Institute, she had to battle two referenda, fight for adoption of an initiative, and speak to scores of community groups at hundreds of meetings. Because gerontologic research was still in its infancy at the time her campaign began, McEachron had to respond convincingly to the criticism of those who perceived no need for such research, while simultaneously organizing the efforts of the thousands of individuals whose collective efforts eventually brought about establishment of the Institute.
McEachron has won countless awards and honors for her work including being named Marin Medical Society Citizen of the Year in 1996, California-Nevada Methodist Homes Business Partner of the Year in 2006, and North Bay Leadership Council’s Excellence in Leadership award in 2007.
McEachron, a Sonoma resident, also volunteers her time and money to assist such other great community causes as Sonoma Valley Hospital and the Tolay Lake and Sonoma Land Trust open space acquisitions.
Mary McEachron’s efforts stand out as paramount in the creation of the Buck Institute for Age Research which is this nation’s first free-standing independent institute dedicated exclusively to age research.
