Linda A. Mason
Chairman & Co-founder
Bright Horizons Family Solutions

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Ms. Mason is chairman and co-founder of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, a $1.3 billion education company. Bright Horizons operates more than 650 high-quality child development centers in 40 states and Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada. Clients include the United Nations, European Commission, Time Warner, Cisco Systems, IBM, Yale University, MIT, Universal Studios, and Paramount Pictures, among others. Bright Horizons also operates eight elementary schools, private and charter. The company employs 20,000 people and serves more than 80,000 families. Bright Horizons was selected by Fortune magazine in January 2009 for the 10th time as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For in America.”

Ms. Mason also co-founded Horizons for Homeless Children, a Boston-based organization that serves the needs of homeless children throughout New England. HHC has trained over 9,500 volunteers to work in 150 playspaces established by HHC in homeless shelters across New England. In addition, HHC operates three full-service childcare centers for homeless children, also providing assistance to mothers to reach self-sufficiency. HHC is a national model for the care and early education of homeless children.

Linda Mason served as a founding board member of the Massachusetts State Department of Early Education and Care. She was also a member of the Governor’s Education Transition team in 2003. Ms. Mason is the author of The Working Mother’s Guide to Life, published in November 2002 by Random House.

Prior to Bright Horizons, Ms. Mason managed large-scale refugee relief operations overseas. She served as co-country director of Save the Children’s emergency program in Sudan during the African famine of the mid-’80s, creating a national program that served 400,000 Sudanese famine victims and operated two refugee camps of 40,000 Eritrean refugees. She also directed a large feeding program for children in Cambodian refugee camps along the Thai border after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. She co-authored the book Rice, Rivalry, and Politics (University of Notre Dame Press), which analyzes the relief operation in Cambodia, based on her experiences there. She serves as global chair of Mercy Corps.