President of Alumni Association to speak at Convocation

Colleen Margiloff  '97, president of the Longwood Alumni Association, will be the speaker for Convocation on Thursday, Sept. 13, at 4 p.m. in Jarman Auditorium.

Margiloff will speak on the topic "You Have to Believe to Receive." This reflects her philosophy that "if you believe in yourself, good things will happen. This applies to a lot of areas of life, including my Longwood education, which is a gift that will last a lifetime."

Convocation, the official beginning of the academic year, ends with a longtime Longwood tradition known as "capping," in which seniors are presented colorfully, often outrageously decorated mortarboards by their little sister/little brother. The first person to be capped is always the senior class president, who goes on stage and is capped by the vice president for academic affairs.

Margiloff is a former teacher and is on the board of Behind the Book, a nonprofit organization that motivates young people to become engaged readers by bringing authors and illustrators into schools in Brooklyn and Harlem. She lives in New York City but soon will move to Rye, N.Y., in suburban Westchester County.

At Longwood, Margiloff was president of the Panhellenic Association, a member of Kappa Delta sorority and a resident assistant for three years. She began her two-year term as alumni president in July 2012. When she returns to campus, she often visits with people to whom she became close as a student, including her sorority's adviser, Joyce Trent [executive secretary in the psychology department], and Dr. Tim Pierson, vice president for student affairs.

"I received a well-rounded education in life at Longwood," she said.

Margiloff, the daughter of a now-retired Navy commander, grew up in Hawaii and moved at age 16 to Virginia Beach. After graduating from Longwood, she taught kindergarten at Dillwyn Primary in Buckingham County for a year, then moved to New York, to which her parents, New York natives, had returned. "I thought at first it would be temporary, but then I decided to stay," she said.

She worked in advertising for three years, then taught sixth-grade English at middle schools in the New York City school system for five years. She quit teaching ("semi-retired, as I like to say") in 2006 after having her third child.

Her husband, Will Margiloff, is CEO and founder of Innovation Interactive, a New York City-based digital marketing firm with more than 450 employees. He spoke as an executive-in-residence in Longwood's College of Business and Economics in November 2011.