Marion R. Fremont-Smith

Marion Fremont-Smith was a Senior Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, where she directed research on governance and accountability of nonprofit organizations. Between 2008 and 2011 she was a Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School where she taught The Law of Nonprofit Organizations. She is the author of Governing Nonprofit Organizations: Federal and State Law and Regulation, published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2004) and two other books and numerous papers on government regulation of nonprofit organizations. Fremont-Smith's interest in nonprofit organizations began in the 1960s when she served as Assistant Attorney General and Director of the Division of Public Charities in Massachusetts. In 1964 she joined the Boston law firm of Choate, Hall and Stewart where she specialized in tax and nonprofit law. She was elected partner in 1971, retiring in 2002, after which she joined the Hauser Center. She is an Honorary Director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Director of Independent Sector and the Council on Foundations. Fremont-Smith received the B.A. degree (1948) in political science from Wellesley College and the J.D. (1951) from Boston University School of Law. She was elected a Fellow (Class III:4) of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1990. She has served as counsel for the Academy, and was a member of the Strategic Planning (Governance) Group in 1998-99, and the Committee on Meetings.