“Good Thinking. Better Results.”
Marie Gemelli-Carroll, EdD, MBA, is a resilient strategist, trusted advisor, and transformational leader whose career has been defined by helping organizations ask better questions, make smarter decisions, and translate ambitious visions into meaningful and measurable results. With more than five decades of professional experience spanning corporate enterprise, consulting, nonprofit leadership, healthcare, education, government relations, communications, and civic development, she brings an unusually broad perspective to executive and board leadership. Her work is grounded in a fundamental belief that organizations achieve their greatest potential when governance, leadership, strategy, and purpose move in the same direction.
As Founder and President of Starboard Strategy, Marie has spent more than three decades advising organizations seeking greater clarity, stronger stakeholder relationships, and sustainable performance. She established the firm in 1995 and built its growth largely through referrals, reflecting the trust and credibility she has cultivated with clients and colleagues throughout her career. Her consulting work encompasses strategy assessment, development and execution; strategic planning; executive and group facilitation; organizational effectiveness; communications; public affairs; research; and stakeholder engagement. Whether working with a corporation, nonprofit organization, government entity, executive team, or board, Marie challenges assumptions and helps leaders move beyond discussion toward decisions, accountability, and results.
Marie’s foundation as a strategist was built through a progressive corporate career encompassing communications, marketing, business development, public affairs, and government relations. Earlier in her career, she held communications positions with Blue Cross of Southwest Ohio and The Kroger Co. before moving into advertising and agency leadership. At Wolf Blumberg Krody, she served as Vice President of Business Development and expanded the agency’s Procter & Gamble portfolio from a single project into seven-figure gross income in less than two years. These experiences strengthened her ability to understand audiences, recognize opportunities, develop relationships, and connect organizational objectives with practical execution.
Her subsequent leadership at Cincinnati Bell expanded that expertise into corporate strategy, reputation, public affairs, and government relations. As Director of Communication Services and Corporate Advertising, Marie managed internal and external resources supporting marketing communications, research, public relations, strategic planning, and creative execution. She redesigned advertising management and integrated marketing communications processes to substantially increase the organization’s market presence while maintaining budget discipline. Later, as Director of Government Affairs for Southwest Ohio, she managed relationships with elected and appointed officials, community organizations, businesses, and social-service stakeholders. Her coalition-building and regulatory work helped secure support for a multimillion-dollar portfolio of regulated telecommunications services, demonstrating an ability to operate effectively where business strategy, public policy, stakeholder interests, and reputation intersect.
One of the defining civic leadership experiences of Marie’s career came when she served as Chief of Staff for the Vision Task Force of Downtown Cincinnati. She helped conceive, design, and implement an extensive community-engagement process involving input from more than 4,000 citizens. The resulting vision helped shape planning and development priorities for downtown Cincinnati and demonstrated Marie’s capacity to bring diverse perspectives together around a shared future. The experience reflects a theme that has continued throughout her career: sustainable transformation is strongest when leaders combine disciplined strategy with genuine listening, inclusive engagement, and clearly articulated outcomes.
Marie also brings substantial experience in nonprofit effectiveness, education, organizational development, and community service. She co-created and served as executive producer of the Organizations of Noteworthy Excellence, or ONE Award, a multi-year nonprofit self-assessment initiative based on the Baldrige National Performance Excellence framework. The program encouraged organizations of varying sizes and missions to evaluate their people, processes, programs, and results while learning from peer review. Her nonprofit and civic involvement has continued through advisory and volunteer service, including strategic support to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul–Cincinnati and service with The Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati. Across these roles, Marie has consistently approached service not simply as participation, but as an opportunity to strengthen organizational capacity and create lasting community impact.
Education and lifelong learning have been equally important dimensions of Marie’s professional identity. She earned a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership and Organizational Innovation from Marymount University, where she was a member of The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. She also holds an MBA with a concentration in Marketing and a Master of Education in Communication Arts from Xavier University, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in English, summa cum laude, from Villa Maria College. Her academic experience includes teaching organizational communications at Xavier University and English language and literature at Ursuline Academy. She has further expanded her governance expertise through Harvard Kennedy School executive education focused on mobilizing nonprofit boards.
Marie’s doctoral research extended her strategic and leadership perspective into healthcare, examining culturally competent communication and patient care. Her research, “Delivering Culturally Competent Patient Care: A Case Study of Registered Nurses,” was published through ProQuest in 2024 and was subsequently presented at the Transcultural Nursing Society Annual Conference. This work reflects her broader interest in transformational leadership, organizational change, cultural engagement, and the human dynamics that determine whether change is merely introduced or meaningfully sustained. Her research orientation complements decades of practical executive experience, enabling her to bring both disciplined inquiry and real-world judgment to complex organizational challenges.
A defining element of Marie’s leadership approach is her ability to understand how people think, collaborate, and respond to change. She is a certified Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® and Whole Brain® Thinking practitioner and is certified in Intrinsic Inclusion™ through V. Randolph Brown Consulting. These capabilities enhance her work with boards and leadership teams by helping people recognize different thinking preferences, strengthen collaboration, encourage inclusion, and approach complex decisions from multiple perspectives. Her expertise is reinforced by extensive experience in strategic planning, business strategy, organizational development, leadership development, public relations, strategic communications, community engagement, facilitation, and government affairs. Her professional profile also reflects significant peer recognition for strategy and strategic planning expertise.
Marie’s leadership has also been recognized through honors including an Excellence Award for Voluntarism and a Phi Kappa Phi “Love of Learning” grant for professional development. Yet her professional philosophy extends beyond formal recognition. A cancer survivor and lifelong learner, she approaches leadership with resilience, empathy, curiosity, integrity, and a deep sense of purpose. She views leadership as service and believes that experience becomes most valuable when it is shared in ways that enable other people and organizations to succeed. That perspective now informs her interest in expanding her contribution through board and advisory service.
As a board candidate, Marie offers particular value to organizations navigating transformation, stakeholder trust, governance evolution, organizational effectiveness, regulatory complexity, or long-range strategic decisions. Her cross-sector background makes her especially well suited to healthcare, education, technology, civic and economic development, trade associations, nonprofit enterprises, and women-owned or women-led organizations. She understands both the strategic responsibilities of governance and the practical realities confronting executives charged with implementation. Rather than viewing a board’s role solely through oversight, Marie brings a collaborative governance mindset centered on asking consequential questions, maintaining accountability, anticipating change, and ensuring that mission and strategy remain connected to measurable outcomes.
At this stage of her career, Marie is motivated by an opportunity to convert decades of accumulated knowledge into service and impact. Her corporate experience taught her discipline and accountability; entrepreneurship taught her adaptability and results orientation; civic leadership demonstrated the power of stakeholder engagement; education and doctoral research strengthened her commitment to inquiry; and nonprofit involvement reinforced the importance of mission. Together, those experiences have shaped a leader who can move comfortably between the boardroom and the community, between strategy and implementation, and between quantitative outcomes and the human realities that ultimately determine organizational success. Her personal purpose is to exemplify strategic, service-oriented leadership that creates and sustains meaningful, measurable impact for individuals, teams, organizations, and communities.
Marie’s signature philosophy, “Good Thinking. Better Results.”, captures both the simplicity and substance of her approach. She believes outstanding organizations are not created through strategy documents alone, but through disciplined thinking, constructive questioning, inclusive leadership, sound governance, and the courage to translate decisions into action. As a strategist, advisor, educator, researcher, and community leader, Marie Gemelli-Carroll brings boards the perspective of someone who has spent a career connecting people, ideas, and institutions around a common objective: creating organizations that remain relevant, accountable, resilient, and prepared for what comes next.
Character:
Marie leads with integrity, empathy, resilience, curiosity, and a deeply rooted commitment to service. Her experience as an executive, entrepreneur, educator, community leader, lifelong learner, and cancer survivor has strengthened her ability to approach both opportunity and adversity with perspective, perseverance, and purpose.
Knowledge:
She combines more than five decades of cross-sector professional experience with advanced education in leadership, organizational innovation, marketing, communications, and governance. Her corporate, consulting, academic, nonprofit, civic, healthcare research, and government-relations experience enables her to understand organizational challenges through multiple lenses and translate that knowledge into practical guidance.
Strategic:
Marie excels at transforming complexity into clarity by challenging assumptions, defining desired outcomes, aligning stakeholders, and connecting vision with disciplined execution. Her work in corporate transformation, strategic planning, regulatory affairs, civic development, nonprofit performance, and organizational effectiveness demonstrates an ability to identify what matters most and build practical pathways toward sustainable results.
Communication:
An accomplished communicator, facilitator, relationship builder, and listener who understands that meaningful change depends on bringing people into the conversation. From engaging thousands of citizens in Cincinnati’s downtown visioning process to advising executives, facilitating groups, teaching students, conducting research, and managing stakeholder relationships, she uses communication to build understanding, trust, alignment, and action.
