Mary Cunningham Agee (born 1951 in Falmouth, Maine) is a former American business executive, author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She became a public figure while working at Bendix Corporation for CEO William Agee in 1980. Mary Agee has spent the majority of her professional life as the President of The Nurturing Network, a charitable organization dedicated to serving the needs of pregnant college and young professional women.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Bendix controversy 3 The Nurturing Network 4 Popular culture 5 References 6 External links 7 Sources

[edit] Biography

Mary Elizabeth Cunningham was born in Maine to Irish-American Catholic parents. Her father was a construction company executive. When she was five years old her parents separated. Her mother took her four children to Hanover, New Hampshire, where a cousin who was a Catholic priest, Rev. William Nolan, offered a safe haven.

Cunningham graduated from high school in 1969. She spent her freshman year at the College of the Sacred Heart in Newton, Massachusetts, and later transferred to Wellesley College in 1970. She graduated magna cum laude in 1973 with a Phi Beta Kappa key and a bachelor's degree in logic and philosophy.

She met her first husband, Howard "Bo" Gray, Jr., an American Express executive (and African-American) during a college mixer in her senior year. They divorced after six years, and were granted an annulment by the Catholic Church. Years later, Mary would say the marriage sprang from "her youthful idealism".

She enrolled and dropped out of the Notre Dame Law School before enrolling at the Harvard Business School in 1977. She graduated with an M.B.A. in the spring of 1979. She declined the most well-paying job offers (32 in total) in New York City so she could work for a well-regarded CEO at Bendix in Michigan.

After considerable national publicity, she resigned in October 1980 after just 15 months at Bendix, and moved to Seagram's in New York City. She married William Agee in June 1982, the second marriage for both.

For many years she has been devoted to Catholic charities and causes, including the pro-life Nurturing Network (see [1]) since 1985.

Mary and William Agee live in Napa Valley in northern California with their two children, Mary Alana and Will.

[edit] Bendix controversy

Shortly after graduating from Harvard Business School in 1979, Mary Cunningham went to work at Bendix as an executive assistant to CEO William Agee. She was quickly promoted to a vice president's position, prompting office rumors and anonymous notes to the board of directors alleging an affair between Cunningham and Agee. It was an allegation both denied, although they subsequently married after Cunningham left Bendix.^[1]

Some of the negative reaction to Cunningham from within the company came from managers who complained she had excessive access to Agee and from other executives who disagreed with Cunningham's business analyses.^[2]

In February 1981, she accepted an offer from Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., as vice president for strategic planning and project development.^[3]

[edit] The Nurturing Network

Mary Cunningham Agee founded The Nurturing Network following the second trimester loss of her first child, Angela Grace. The pain surrounding this tragedy caused Agee to look more closely at the suffering of women who had abortions because they felt they had no other choice.^[4] The Agees sold a vacation home to have start up funds, and on Mother's Day 1985 The Nurturing Network was founded.^[5]

The Nurturing Network (TNN) is an international charitable organization dedicated to serving the needs of pregnant college and young professional women. TNN exists to serve this target population because there are very few resources available for such women.^[6] In the over 20 years since its founding, TNN has grown from one woman's personal conviction to an international organization with over 48,000 members and over 19,000 women served.

[edit] Popular culture

The war between Bendix, Martin Marietta, and Allied was the source of the buzz phrase "Pac-Man defense" (i.e., eat your opponent before he eats you).

[edit] References

1. ^ "Mary Agee", usnews.com, February 20, 2005 (U.S. News and World Report print edition, February 28, 2005.)
2. ^ Bendix Politics
3. ^ "Mary Cunningham Redux", TIME, March 9, 1981.
4. ^ "A Champion of Women in Crisis," Our Sunday Visitor "Programs and Priorities"
5. ^ "Network of Hope," Readers Digest, November 1991
6. ^ "A Working Woman's Network Into Motherhood," The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 4, 1990

[edit] External links

• [2] - A managerial perspective

[edit] Sources

• Reversal of Fortune, The Seattle Times, June 12, 1995, p. E-1
• The Wreck of Morrison Knudsen Time, April 3, 1995
• Golden Goodbye, Time, February 21, 1983
• Bendix Abuzz Time, October 6, 1980