Dame Mary Marsh is the first director of the Clore Social Leadership Programme, which seeks to help aspiring leaders in the third sector by providing training.

She was chief executive of the NSPCC for eight years from 2000, during which time the organisation tripled its annual output. Prior to this, her career was in education. She was headteacher of two large comprehensive schools in the 1990s, the second being Holland Park School in inner London.

Dame Mary was appointed a non-executive director of HSBC Bank plc from 1 January 2009.  She was also appointed by the government in January 2009 as the interim chair of Skills-Third Sector (the new sector skills body). She has been a member of the National Council of the Learning and Skills Council since 2005 and is a trustee of Young Enterprise. She is co-chair of GRIT, the alumni voluntary sector interest group, London Business School and a governor of Shooters Hill Post-16 Campus school near her home in Greenwich.

She was a judge at the 2009 and 2011 Charity Awards.

Dame Mary was born in Liverpool and has four grown-up sons.