Nancy Meyers Marsiglia, 1953-2017
Nancy Marsiglia led several capital campaign efforts including those for the Audubon Institute (both the Zoo and Aquarium), the Children’s Museum, and Country Day School. She made a big difference in the lives of children through her tireless advocacy on the boards of Agenda for Children, United Way, Kingsley House, Louisiana Policy Institute, Planned Parenthood, and the New Orleans Council for Young Children. Politically she helped elect Senator John Breaux, co-chaired the Louisiana Finance Committee for Bill Clinton, served as Senator Mary Landrieu’s Campaign Treasurer, and mentored countless local officials. As an investor, Marsiglia helped transform “The Figaro,” the city’s alternative weekly, into “Gambit.” She was also one of the twelve leaders of Women of the Storm, a non-partisan group of women who gathered to draw the attention of Congress and the media to the post-Katrina and Rita needs of South Louisiana.
Nancy Marsiglia, Photograph, 2006. Courtesy of the Newcomb Archives.
Nancy Marsiglia, seated, on her receipt of the Hannah Solomon Award, 2010. Photograph. Courtesy of Madalyn Schenk.
Testimonies to Nancy Marsiglia
On the sucess of the Nancy M. Marsiglia Institute of Justice: As I watched the graduates make their presentations, I couldn’t help thinking how proud Nancy Marsiglia, the namesake of the institute, would have been at that moment. Nancy, who co-owned Gambit with my wife Margo and me for nearly five years, conceived the institute over lunch one day about two years ago with about a dozen other women activists.
They were tired of the political noise that passes for discourse these days, so they recruited Martha Lemoine of the Center for Civic Education to teach them the Constitution (over lunches, of course). When Nancy died in May 2017, her friends and family agreed the institute should bear her name. –Clancy DuBos
And on her overall memory:
Nancy shaped the physical face of modern New Orleans as no one else and was loved by all whom she touched. –Madalyn Schenk
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