Marlee Myers has helped bring hundreds of millions of investment dollars to our local entrepreneurial community. As co-founder of the Pittsburgh office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, she is consistently listed in Best Lawyers in America. And she has represented many of the most successful entrepreneurs in Pittsburgh and in Silicon Valley.
A lifelong Pittsburgher now living in Fox Chapel, Marlee grew up in the Squirrel Hill home of her immigrant grandparents — they lived on the first floor, with Marlee’s family on the second floor and boarders on the third. Dedicated to community service, she was the founding board chair of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, which she helped create more than 20 years ago.
What upcoming events are you excited to attend?
I’m looking forward to Morgan Lewis Community Service Week, and especially the presentation on how we can provide pro bono help to immigrant children in Pittsburgh.
Also: The 15th anniversary celebration of the Morgan Lewis Silicon Valley office, which will take place in our new building in Palo Alto.
Best part of your job?
I get to meet amazing entrepreneurs who are changing the world with their innovative ideas.
What’s your big idea for Pittsburgh?
Pittsburgh is a Big Idea! What other Rust Belt city has reinvented itself as a hub for technology, biomedical innovation, higher education, finance and energy, as well as manufacturing? And at the same time, we have retained our blue collar work ethic and our down-to-earth niceness.
How does Pittsburgh inspire or inform your work?
Pittsburgh is a place where people make things, and where people make things happen. We are infused with a “can-do” spirit, and we never give up.
Write three words to describe Pittsburgh:
Home sweet home.
Where do you always take out-of-town visitors?
Schenley Plaza (I’m so proud of my role in creating this wonderful transformative space in Oakland — which used to be an ugly parking lot), Frick Park and Clayton.
We arrive for dinner. What’s on the menu?
I would make Marlee’s casserole, my ultimate comfort food. You separately make a veggie/meat/tomato sauce, a bechamel/cheddar cheese sauce and pasta, then combine them (pasta on bottom, then meat sauce, pour cheese sauce over top), add fresh grated parmesan and bake. Yummy.
Where will we find you on a Sunday morning?
You will always find me at Club 1 in Shadyside, in Marilyn Clougherty’s super fun dance aerobics class.
Best movie you saw in 2017?
STEP! This movie is a documentary more dramatic than any fiction. It tells the true story, with real people, of a charter school for girls in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Baltimore. Download it!
Best Pittsburgh brunch spot?
What is the one thing that would surprise Pittsburghers most about you?
Two things here. First is that I spend almost half my time in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and represent some incredible innovative companies there, including personal genetics pioneer 23andMe and secondary ticketing pioneer StubHub (which we sold to eBay). The second is personal. I was a hippie back in the day. Here is a photo that proves it, taken in my beloved Frick Park, at the fountain near the new Environmental Center on Beechwood Boulevard. I won’t tell you how many years ago!
What question do you wish we had asked?
What am I the proudest of? This is a slam dunk. My amazing children. My son is a Lt. Commander in the Navy, stationed in Italy and in charge of analytical intelligence for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has four beautiful and well-traveled children. My daughter is a lawyer in Washington, having excelled at Stanford Law School and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. She has a beautiful baby boy. In the photo above — on a rare occasion when all of us were together — I am holding my daughter’s newborn and surrounded by my son’s four children.
See who else is NEXT Up here.
Have a NEXT Up suggestion? Email us!
