Linda Mason is co-founder and retired President and Chair of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, taking it from start-up in her home, raising financing, building the organization, and taking it public. The company, now a $6.5 billion public company, is the largest world-wide provider of worksite child care, early education, and education advising, operating 1200 childcare centers and employing 30,000 people.
Linda also co-founded Horizons for Homeless Children (HHC), a Boston-based organization that serves the needs of homeless children and their parents. HHC operates a large childcare center for the homeless in Roxbury serving 175 children and their parents. In addition, HHC has trained over 15,000 volunteers to work in 150 play spaces established by HHC in homeless shelters.
Linda recently stepped down as long-term Chair of Mercy Corps. Mercy Corps is a $500 million international relief and development agency headquartered in the U.S. Mercy Corps operates in 43 countries serving 17 million people, with major programs in some of the most difficult environments in the world including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Somalia, and Congo, among others.
Earlier in her career, Linda managed large-scale refugee relief operations overseas. She served as Co-Country Director of Save the Children’s emergency program in Sudan during the African famine of the mid-80’s, creating a national program that served 400,000 Sudanese famine victims. She also was responsible for the operation of emergency services for two refugee camps serving over 40,000 Eritrean refugees. Linda also directed a large feeding program for malnourished children in Cambodian refugee camps along the Thai border after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia of 1979.
Linda is Chair of The Boston Foundation, a $1.7 billion foundation. She served as Leader-in-Residence at the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2014-2016. Linda has a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She also serves on the boards of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Boston Foundation, Embrace Boston, and MASS MoCA.