MaryRose Mazzola is an attorney, public policy expert, and political professional with nearly fifteen years of experience across government and equity-focused nonprofits. She currently serves as Senior Vice President, Director of External Affairs at Eastern Bank and the Eastern Bank Foundation, the $250M charitable arm of Eastern Bank providing support to historically marginalized communities. In this role, she helps lead both organizations’ policy research, advocacy, and coalition work and serves as a senior advisor to Executive Chair Bob Rivers in his civic leadership endeavors.
In addition to her role at Eastern, MaryRose is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she teaches Reproductive Rights, Politics and Policy and Speechwriting. She is also the Executive Director of the 617 Rocks Foundation, which has raised half a million dollars to date for cancer research and treatment via an annual charity concert.
Most recently, MaryRose was the Chief External Affairs Officer at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts, where she led Planned Parenthood's strategic external-facing work, including policy advocacy, organizing and outreach, education, research and training, and marketing and communications. She also spent two years as the inaugural Director of the PPLM ASPIRE Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health, bringing together Planned Parenthood’s nationally recognized research, clinical training, and professional education programs, and launching the organization’s legal and policy research program.
MaryRose spent the first decade of her career in state and local politics and government, including as Senior Advisor to Mayor Michelle Wu’s successful 2021 campaign, Chief of Staff to State Senator Barry Finegold, and as Senator Finegold’s Chief Strategist and Campaign Manager. From 2016-2018, she was the Executive Director of the Boston Women’s Workforce Council, the City of Boston’s public-private initiative dedicated to closing gender and racial wage gaps. As ED, MaryRose quadrupled the number of partner companies and oversaw the data collection and analysis of more than 200,000 employees’ salaries, making Boston the first city in the nation to use real compensation data to analyze the gender pay gap.
MaryRose received a Master in Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, a law degree from Northeastern University School of Law, and a Bachelor’s degree in political science from the Merrimack College Honors Program.