The Laguna Blanca Board of Trustees has announced the addition of three new members, Mary Morouse, Josh Connor and Ann Levine.
Morouse combines her love of technology and education as a businessperson, a mom, and a community volunteer. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she joined Xerox Corporation as an education sales specialist. At Xerox she saw the potential of the nascent personal computer business.
She transitioned into UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management to earn her MBA, paying her tuition by competing and winning on game shows Super Password and Win, Lose or Draw.
After a summer internship at Apple Computer, Morouse joined Microsoft in 1989. There, she led teams to market Microsoft Project and Microsoft Access. She then moved to Santa Monica to manage the Norton Group at Symantec.
In 1998, Morouse returned to Seattle to join a startup bookstore called Amazon as vice president of merchandising. It was on this second stint in Seattle that she met her husband Jim.
After the birth of their first child, Mary and Jim, both native Californians, moved to Santa Barbara in 2001. They have three children, two of whom (Ava and Jack) attend Laguna Blanca.
Morouse spent five years on the Montecito Union School District Board, including two as president. She is currently the board chairman at Mission Springs Camp and Conference Center near Santa Cruz.
Connor is the founding partner of Connor Capital, which focuses on private investments in transportation and transportation-related companies. He also is the co-portfolio manager and managing director of the transportation infrastructure fund at Oaktree Capital Management.
For some two decades, Connor has been a leader within the transport industries, having been an investor, a strategic advisor, lender, and leading banker to numerous transportation companies worldwide.
Prior to founding Connor Capital, Connor was a managing director and the co-head of the Industrials Banking Group at Barclays, a position he was appointed to in October 2013.
In August 2015, he was elected to join the board of Frontier Airlines, a private airline controlled by Indigo Partners. He has also served on the Board of Directors of Copa Airlines, a member of the Morgan Stanley Investment Banking Management committee.
Connor is a graduate of Williams College, where he earned a B.A. in economics. He has previously been a Trustee of The Pingry School in New Jersey and a Board member of Youth, INC, a New York City-based non-profit helping children.
He and his wife Patricia live in Montecito with their three children, Lily, Jack and Abigail, all of whom attend Laguna Blanca School.
Levine is a law school admission consultant and the author of four books related to law school. Her most recent, The Law School Admission Game: Play Like An Expert, 3rd Ed., was released on Aug. 1 and quickly became the best-selling law school guidebook on Amazon.
Through her private consulting practice, LawSchoolExpert.com, Levine works with individuals worldwide seeking admission to law schools in the U.S.
Levine graduated from the University of Miami (B.S. 1996, J.D. Magna Cum Laude 1999) and served as director of admissions at California Western School of Law and Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, before moving to Santa Barbara with her husband, Brent, in 2002.
She practiced business litigation at Hill & Associates, then started Law School Expert in 2004.
Active in the community, Levine was a member of the board of the Anti-Defamation League for 12 years, including serving as Regional Board chair.
She was the first recipient of the Santa Barbara Tri-Counties Region ADL Leadership Award in 2007 and was recognized nationally by ADL as a recipient of the Ginsberg Leadership Award in 2009.
Levine and her husband have two daughters in the middle school at Laguna, Haley and Nicole, and are approved as a resource family for Santa Barbara County.
For more information about Laguna Blanca, visit lagunablanca.org or call 687-2461.
— Tara Broucqsault for Laguna Blanca School.