Mary Elcano

Current Member

General Counsel and Corporate Secretary
American Red Cross

Mary Elcano is the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the American Red Cross. She served as the Acting President and Chief Executive Officer from November 2007 through June 2008 and led the organization through a significant restructuring of the national headquarters departments and lines of business.

In 2006, in conjunction with the Board of Governors, Elcano designed a corporate governance model and coordinated the first major legislative reform of the Board in 60 years. The new strategic oversight and governance Board was signed into law by the President of the United States in 2007.

Elcano is the chief legal and compliance officer for the Red Cross. In that capacity, she is responsible for litigation and legal advice to the American Red Cross. This includes the Board of Governors, senior leadership as well as business units in national headquarters, chapters and Blood Services regions. The practice areas range from general corporate law, employment and labor law, ethics, contracts, federal regulatory and FDA matters, international law, and estates and trusts.

Elcano also oversees the corporate compliance program, including investigations, compliance programs and ethics, and two whistleblower hotlines - the Concern Connection Line for fraud, waste and abuse and the Biomedical Regulatory Line for FDA regulatory matters. Elcano serves as the Corporate Secretary to the organization. In that capacity, she is responsible for Board corporate governance and ethics matters, meeting agendas, logistics and planning.

Before joining the Red Cross, Elcano was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Sidley Austin LLP with an extensive legal practice in postal matters in the United States and internationally. Clients included large direct mail marketing companies, express freight shippers, national logistics and printing companies, and the paper and envelope industry. Elcano also represented clients in employment law, focusing on diversity, discrimination and ADR. At Sidley, she introduced Workplace Innovations in Negotiated Solutions (WINS), a comprehensive set of ADR tools customized to fit a client's corporate culture and goals.

In 1982, Elcano embarked on an 18-year career at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Starting as an employment law attorney, she attained successive senior management positions in Human Resources and capped her career as USPS General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Human Resources in 2000. As General Counsel, she was responsible for federal and corporate practice areas, legislative matters, litigation/ADR and was counsel to the Board of Governors of the USPS. As Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Elcano directed the USPS employment, labor relations and diversity areas for an 800,000-employee workforce and created an ADR program for the Postal Service – REDRESS – which resulted in a 50 percent reduction in EEO complaints in two years.