Kate Rose Marquez grew up as the youngest of six children in South Bend, Indiana. The family lived about a mile away from University of Notre Dame, where her father, Jim Murphy, led public relations and fundraising efforts for the school, working out of the university’s iconic golden-domed Main Building. For Marquez, Notre Dame was an idyllic childhood playground. “I can tell you some of the best hide-and-seek places on campus,” she says. “I would ride my banana-seat bike around, learned to swim in the lakes, and took classical lessons for eight years in the music department.” Today, Marquez is CEO of Ascend Dallas, an influential community organization that until April was known as WiNGS. It launched in 1908 as the YWCA. It’s no surprise that her career path eventually led to nonprofit leadership. Marquez got her start working at her father’s fundraising events when she was in the fifth grade. But her meandering career path started with journalism. Her father, who worked as a television news producer before joining Notre Dame, oversaw the school’s Ave Maria Press, a publishing arm formed in 1865. She and her parents and siblings avidly consumed the news, with multiple newspapers landing in the front yard every morning and PBS NewsHour often playing on the television at night. “It’s what dictated our table conversations at dinner,” Marquez says. After earning a B.A. in American history and English (Notre Dame did not offer a journalism degree at the time), she worked as a television producer and radio broadcaster for NBC affiliates in South Bend. She moved to Dallas in 1989 and ran her own communications firm, before working at what’s now Cumulus Radio and DDB Needham Worldwide. A chance meeting ultimately led to her becoming VP of marketing at the Dallas Morning News, where she had a $13.7 million budget and a team of more than 30. The entrepreneurial bug bit again in 2001, and after developing branding and cause marketing initiatives for corporations and nonprofits for 17 years, she took over marketing and development for Society of St. Vincent de Paul of North Texas. These myriad but aligned experiences made her the ideal choice to lead Ascend as CEO, a post she has held since January 2020. She hit the ground running and developed a new three-year strategic plan. Every single milestone was achieved within 18 months. The organization’s budget increased by 84 percent. In the past year, the number of clients served has grown by nearly 40 percent, and Marquez expects an additional 27 percent in growth by the end of this fiscal year. Read more on how Kate Rose Marquez is taking Ascend to new heights at the link below.
Thank you, D CEO, for sharing such an accomplished career.. Congratulations, Kate Rose Marquez, for your inspiring success! ❤️
Congrats!!
Chief Executive Officer at Ascend Dallas
3dThank you so much for highlighting Ascend Dallas and our mission to empower women, fight poverty and impact generations! 💜🧡💜🧡