Karen Maruyama Bolognese is mother of three at Winchester High School, McCall Middle School, and Vinson Owen Elementary School. By training, she is a large animal veterinarian in Massachusetts and formerly an Assistant Vice President of Finance with Ford Motor Company’s start-up in the Philippines. She worked in Nagoya, Japan, as a teacher and then in Tokyo, Japan, as an interpreter / translator for a major Japanese life insurer. Her husband, Ralph, is a Managing Director of Finance at Applied Materials, was born and raised in Medford, and is very active in Winchester sports.

Karen has been very involved in the Town and its schools since moving to Winchester in 2011. In her third year on the Winchester School Committee, she currently serves as the Chair. She is particularly focused on driving policy such as the update of the 2022 Bullying Prevention and Response Plan; budgetary and curricular strategic long-term planning; and the Lynch School Project with the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

Since 2012, she has served as a dedicated member of Town Meeting. Prior to her work on the School Committee, she was elected to two terms on the McCall School Council, representing the diversity of the McCall community. At Vinson Owen, she spearheaded the school’s International Night since its inaugural event in 2016. She currently leads overall enrichment at the school and helped develop the school’s core values and mission statement as a member of the VO School Council in 2012-14. She led the effort to reinvigorate the Science Park at Vinson-Owen and the establishment of the VO Butterfly Garden. She chairs the Governance Committee of the Board of Trustees for the Winchester Community Music School and has participated in the WCMS Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee.

She holds a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine; a Master of Business Administration from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business; and a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in English from Vanderbilt University. She also studied advanced Japanese in the Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. (Source)

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