Marge Gates was reared in Annapolis, Maryland, left, and summered at family getaways, on the South River, center, and Quiet
Waters estate on the Chesapeake, right.
44
WBM march 2019
A FEARLESSNESS OF
CONSEQUENCES
When her daughter was a toddler, Gates
entered Georgetown University School of Law
as a single mother and was among the first
class of female graduates. With $10,000 in seed
money from Ralph Nader, she and a colleague
co-founded the Center for Women Policy
Studies in Washington, D.C. Before Congress
in the late 1960s, she testified in support of
legislation that would later be drafted into law
as the Fair Credit Act, enabling women, and
other minorities, to apply for and receive lines
of credit and credit cards in their own names.
Following her role as deputy director of the
U.S.D.A., in 1983, she landed the penultimate
job of her career when she was named executive
director of Girls Clubs of America (later re-organized
as Girls Incorporated and re-branded
as Girls Inc.). The national nonprofit based in
New York City supports minority girls as they
transition into their teens.
BBORN IN 1936, and reared in Annapolis,
Maryland, Margaret Jane Gates was the first
female in her family to attend and graduate from
college — earning undergraduate, graduate and
law degrees. She was one of the nation’s first
CIA female case officers, working in 1962 as a
deep cover operative in Miami, during the post-
Cuban Missile Crisis. Later, she would pose
as a diplomat’s wife in Mexico. In June 1997
she married University of North Carolina
Wilmington Chancellor Dr. James R. Leutze
at Saint Andrew’s Church, in Annapolis, and
opened a new chapter of her extraordinary life.