Image of Mary Ann Villanueva
Leadership Team

Mary Ann Villanueva

  • Chief External Officer

Mary Ann Villanueva is the Chief External Officer for Uncommon Schools, where she oversees development, enrollment, external affairs, marketing and media.

Prior to joining Uncommon, Mary Ann spent 19 years in leadership roles within Global Branding at Citi, initially as part of the internal strategy team to unify and transform the brand following the Travelers/Citicorp merger. Her most recent role was Head of Brand Culture & Engagement where she implemented programs to reinforce and amplify the firm’s mission and values in addition to overseeing marketing budget and operations. Before that, she was selected for a marketing fellowship at WPP Group, her 5-year tenure culminating in the development and launch of BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands methodology to measure brand equity and value. Mary Ann served as board chair of All In Together, a non-partisan organization dedicated to encouraging voting-age women to participate fully in U.S.civic and political life. She was a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Program and is a member of the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Hall of Fame Academy.

Mary Ann earned her MBA from Columbia Business School with concentrations in Management and Finance and received her BA in Economics and Political Science from Rutgers University.