How long have you served on the Advisory Board?
![Merilee Marsh](https://www.boisestate.edu/osher/wp-content/uploads/sites/426/2020/04/MM_Photo.jpg)
Since 2016.
Are you part of any committees? If so, what is your role?
For the past few years I have served on the Track 4 Curriculum committee, first as a member and then as Chair. I’m also part of the Board Development Committee. Currently, I’m looking forward to serving as Chair of the Osher Advisory Board.
What is your most memorable Osher Institute experience?
Writing workshops with Susan Rowe head my list.
Favorite Osher presentation you have attended thus far?
From Susan Rowe’s writing workshops to Shelton Woods classes on history, classes that offer new information are appealing.
Are you a Boise native? If not, where are you originally from?
In 2009, my husband Terry Donohue and I moved from upstate New York to Boise. Having grown up in a military family, I grew up all over the United States. At last count, I lived in nine states.
What is your career history?
Marketing, sales, copywriting…. The day after graduating from college, I began my career as a radio station copywriter. Stops along the way included selling airtime for the nation’s first CBS affiliate, being the PR director for a private law school, and founding an advertising agency. The past 17 years before my retirement I worked as a marketing consultant to law firms, with clients from New York to California. During that time, I also presented marketing workshops in Russia, Ukraine, and Romania. I’m a veteran, and served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.
What hobbies do you enjoy?
Reading, writing, travel (on hiatus for an indeterminate time), spending time with friends. (I used to say “lunch with friends” but that has now changed to walks and talks via the phone.) Since our family is scattered throughout the U.S., not being able to travel has affected us.
What are you doing to occupy your time during the stay-at-home order?
Although I devour mysteries, I vary those with books that offer alternative stimulation, such as Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Curiously, I find jigsaw puzzles are currently satisfying, perhaps because the intention is to make order out of chaos and there’s a good result at the completion of the puzzle. I also participate in Jazzercize on demand, dancing around the living room and occasionally flinging one foot into the coffee table.