Lilly Zaks
Online Editor
While she has certainly made her mark, Mary Margaret (Myers) Frank graced the halls of R.J. Reynolds High School just like all of us. She attended Reynolds from her sophomore to senior year as it transitioned from a senior high school to a four-year high school.
Inside the classroom, Frank feels like she received a great foundation, setting her up for a lifelong journey of learning.
“I was blessed with excellent teachers,” Frank said. “I got a great education in Winston-Salem public schools – from Whitaker to Brunson, Wiley to Pailsey, and finally Reynolds and the Career Center. While I was there, my teachers were dedicated and tough. I learned to stretch myself, fail, and get back up.”
Outside the classroom, she was involved in many activities amid the pines, from goalie on the Varsity Girls Soccer Team to captain of the Dancing Boots. She served in the Student Government Association and worked to create the Fall Festival, a tradition that we still have today.
“We ran on this platform that put forth a Fall Festival,” Frank said. “It was amazing how it brought the school together. I always felt like the more you put into a place, the more you get back.”
After graduating from Reynolds in 1987, Frank attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a place she now calls home. However, this wasn’t her plan at first. “I wanted to see the world, have different experiences, and meet people from different walks of life,” Frank said. “What I found in Chapel Hill was a place large enough with many opportunities to discover my own path. Just because many people you know go there doesn’t mean your path has to look like everybody else’s.”
Initially, Frank was on track to be an art history major, as she wanted to curate a museum. She soon realized that this path wasn’t for her.
“I had intentions of curating The Met in New York,” Frank said. “I went and lived in New York on somebody’s couch and interned at an art gallery for free on Madison and 57th. Getting some experience was important because I realized the art world of New York wasn’t for me.”
For Frank, when one door closed, another door opened in ways she didn’t expect. Back in Chapel Hill, she found her new calling at the Undergraduate Business Symposium. “I sat on the front row of the keynote speaker address,” Frank said. “I’m pretty much an introvert, but I will ask a question. [The speaker] was an entrepreneur and had started his own company that had been
successful, and I asked him, if you could go back and take one class over again, what class would it be? He looked me straight in the eyes, and he said accounting.”
Immediately after the keynote, she signed up to take accounting. This set her on a course of study that she would follow for the rest of her academic career.
“I signed up for a course on tax policy with a new professor,” Frank said. “He had just graduated and came to North Carolina to teach. He turned the course into more than I could ever have imagined. It was the most exciting class I have ever taken,” Frank said. That professor, Doug Shackelford, would be instrumental in her journey.
After graduating from Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and a Master of Accounting, Frank went to work for Arther Anderson in Washington, D.C. “When I went to DC, I planned to return to North Carolina and possibly run for governor one day,” Frank said. “I went to DC to better understand policy. It’s funny how you have all these plans in life, and they are just meant to get you on a path that leads you somewhere else. I would have never reached where I am now had I not considered running for governor long ago.
It didn’t take her long to find her way back to North Carolina. Back in Chapel Hill, Shackelford and Julie Collins had redone the accounting PhD program at UNC and recruited Frank to come back.
“Doug was my PhD advisor and mentored me. It was wonderful to have an esteemed male professor, saying you can do this. He believed I could reach higher than I ever imagined. He pushed me to think bigger and bolder. Julie Collins was a well-respected, accomplished professor and a mother who helped me see and believe that, as a woman, I could do it. They were influential.”
Once she earned her PhD, Frank worked as an Assistant Professor teaching MBA students and conducted research at the University of Chicago. There, she married her husband, but they realized Chicago wasn’t for them in the long term.
“I had a few schools call me, knowing that I was from the southeast and had just gotten married, asking me if I wanted to take jobs,” Frank said. “Academics is an interesting profession; getting jobs where you want is tough. You sort of have to take what is offered. When
people called me at schools I would be happy with, I looked at my husband and said, ‘You don’t get these opportunities very often.’ We have to take it.”
Frank landed a job at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, earned tenure, and later became a Senior Associate Dean. After 21 years, she reached a pivotal point in her career as her two kids went to college. “The question became, ‘What’s next?’” Frank said. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Then Doug Shackleford, my mentor, stepped down as dean of Kenan Flagler. All of a sudden, there was an opening at a time when my kids were no longer home which was key. I would have never left Darden for any school other than UNC Kenan-Flagler.”
She felt as though it was her calling to return to Chapel Hill, a place where she began this journey in business, although it wasn’t an easy decision.
“When you feel like you’ve thought deeply about it and come for reasons other than yourself, it feels really good, no matter how difficult it is,” Frank said. “There is something special about making a choice you feel isn’t about you or your success. It’s about the impact you can have. Whether it was to go to D.C., Chicago, Virginia, or return to Chapel Hill, each choice was about the feeling in my gut that there is some impact you’re supposed to have here.”
Frank has certainly made an impact, from serving as the chairwoman of the audit committee of the publicly-traded Female Health Company to creating the Tri-Sector Leadership Fellows program at the University of Virginia, using business as her path.
“I believe that business is the most powerful avenue to create prosperity for all when used in the right way by the right people,” Frank said. “So, to tell that narrative has been my life’s passion.”
This avenue has certainly had plenty of difficult decisions while teaching her a multitude of things along the way.
“In life, you will have to make decisions that people are not going to agree with and upset some people, and at that point, you have to lean into your values,” Frank said. “What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of person will you be? Will you be happy looking at yourself in the mirror and your kids’ eyes? If your kids understood the background and the decisions you made, would they be proud of you?”
Her values include responsibility for yourself, respect for others, and resilience in life. She has carried them throughout her life, including her ups and downs. “You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going,” Frank said. “I mean, I am so not where I thought I would be. Work hard, but enjoy the ride. I enjoyed getting through the downs, and I enjoyed riding the highs. Plowing through the low moments helps you understand the high moments.” Reflecting on her high school experience, Frank recalls two pieces of advice her mother.
“Just smile,” Frank said. “Mary Margaret, all people need to see is a smile. Then the second one was, Mary Margaret, just ask people questions. People love people who are interested in other people, so just ask questions. These are the two pieces of advice I took into college, and I’ve taken into every situation that I have ever been with, because I walk into new situations all the time, and they’re challenging, especially as someone who’s an introvert, and those have served me well.”