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MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: Molly Deese

Adventure Aquarium welcomed Molly Deese in 2020 as the new Executive Director.  Her 30 year experience as a parks and attraction executive allowed her to climb the ladder and move from her roots in Valdosta, Georgia.  Molly loves her new job at the aquarium and her team is 75% women. 

She grew up living throughout the Midwest and Southeast since her father needed to move for his job.  This is her first experience living in the Northeast.  

Molly also has a history of ‘giving back’ and getting involved in non-profits.  She was a rotary member in Valdosta and hopes to join a local rotary sometime soon.  Molly has three grown children (with a grandson on the way).  Since they were teenagers, the family had spent Christmas Day working at a soup kitchen in Valdosta.  The kids complained at first but changed their minds after the first time. 

Molly met the South Jersey Impact 100 group at a booth last fall at the “SJ Magazine Empowerment Panel Discussion” at The Mansion in Voorhees.  After speaking with members, she knew joining and getting involved was the ‘right thing to do’.   Her reasons for this were networking, finding other strong and powerful women like herself and getting involved in helping out in her new home of South Jersey.  She was excited about the concept of Impact 100.

Since moving to southern New Jersey, Molly has become actively involved in many local efforts.  She now serves on both the Events and Public Relations/Marketing Committees of Impact100 SJ.  Molly has also become a member of the Camden Community Partnership, founded in 1984 as a private, non-profit corporation dedicated to planning and implementing high-quality urban redevelopment projects to revitalize the city. 

Molly travels to see her husband who lives in Valdosta and rents an apartment in Camden on the waterfront.  She plans to stay in South Jersey as long as she can.