Mary Wells Lawrence (born Mary Georgene Berg on May 25, 1928) is an American retired advertising executive. She was the founding president of Wells, Rich, Greene, an advertising agency known for its creative work. Lawrence was the first female CEO of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Mary Wells Lawrence was awarded the Lion of St. Mark for her lifetime achievements at the 2020 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Education and early years Lawrence was born in Youngstown, Ohio, United States. In the late 1940s, she studied for two years at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she met industrial design student Burt Wells. While there she became a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. In 1949, they married and moved to Youngstown, Ohio. She began her advertising career there in 1951, as a copywriter for McKelvey's department store. She relocated to New York City, where she studied theatre and drama. By 1952, she had become Macy's fashion advertising manager. She divorced Wells that year, only to remarry him in 1954. Lawrence worked as a copywriter and copy group head at McCann Erickson in 1953, later joining the Lennen & Newell advertising agency's "brain trust." In 1957, she began a seven-year tenure at Doyle Dane Bernbach (now DDB Worldwide). In her 2002 book, A Big Life in Advertising, Lawrence cited DDB partners James Edwin Doyle, Maxwell Dane, and William Bernbach as significant influences on her subsequent career. Family Lawrence had two daughters with Bert Wells, Pamela and Kathy. She divorced Bert a second time in 1965, and married former Braniff International Airways president Harding Lawrence on November 25, 1967. Mr. Lawrence had four children: sons Harding, Jr., who died in infancy, James B., State R.,and one daughter, Deborah. He died on February 16, 2002, at age 81 of pancreatic cancer. Jack Tinker and Partners and Braniff Lawrence went to work for Jack Tinker and his new advertising group, Jack Tinker and Partners. The members of this revolutionary new think tank were dubbed "Tinker's Thinkers". The "Thinkers" would create ad campaigns for other agencies at Interpublic, a holding company of many US advertising firms. Lawrence had previously worked for Tinker at McCann-Erickson, and was excited to partner with him again. Her star rose in the advertising world with the success of her advertising campaign for Braniff International Airways, "The End of the Plain Plane". She hired