Overview
Mary L. Kramer is the recently retired director of special projects and Detroit Homecoming at Crain Communications, a family-owned B2B media company. She held a number of roles at Crain, including vice president and group publisher for Crain’s city business publications in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and New York. Before joining Crain’s Detroit Business in 1989, Kramer had 16 years of reporting and management experience at daily newspapers.
Detroit Homecoming, which Kramer co-founded in 2014, is an initiative to bring successful Detroit-area “expats” back to their hometown to reengage with its revitalization. It has produced more than $600 million in pending and closed investments.
She is chair of the Skillman Foundation, a $500 million endowment focused on improving the lives of Detroit children. She ended an eight-year term on the board of Michigan’s fourth largest university, Grand Valley State University, in 2020, serving the the last two years as chair. In addition to Grand Valley, she has served on the Board of Visitors for the Wayne State University School of Business and School of Medicine.
Kramer was the first woman to be elected president of the historic Detroit Athletic Club, and in 2017 was named to the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. She is a member of the board of directors for MiBank Corp. in suburban Detroit.
Kramer serves on the advisory board for the Widener Global Leaders Program at Wichita State University’s W. Frank Barton School of Business, a unique program to develop selected women scholars as tomorrow’s global leaders.
She holds a bachelor’s degree from Grand Valley State University and a master’s in integrated marketing communications from Eastern Michigan University. She has honorary doctorates from Grand Valley, Walsh College, Alma College, Central Michigan University and Eastern Michigan University.