Marion Mattingly

2019 Roberta Wolfe Bryant Community Service Award

It was during her time as a consultant to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in 1994 that she met Dan Callister, an attorney in DC, who was just piloting a new idea called the “Do the Write Thing” (DtWT) Challenge program.  With Dan’s ideas and Marion’s contacts, DtWT moved from the D.C. pilot program to a national program with 10 original cities signing onto the idea at her behest. Marion continued to be instrumental in expanding the number of cities that participated as well as in finding the Chairs who could run DtWT in their respective cities.   For ten years Marion worked tirelessly to expand DtWT, recruit chairs, secure funding, and increase DtWT’s visibility to state and national leaders.  Much of what DtWT is today is due to the groundwork that Marion laid in its early years.