Cecily M. Carson is a native New Yorker who graduated from Dartmouth College in 1995. She majored in Government, minored in Film and has a certificate in Women's Studies. She spent two years at Andrew Edson & Associates, Inc., a corporate and financial public and investor relations firm in New York. She then studied for two years in the Fashion Institute of Technology's (FIT) Jewelry Design program and started an independent jewelry design business called, CMC Jewelry Designs, Inc. She is president of the Carson Family Charitable Trust, a trustee of The Museum of Arts and Design, Fisher House Foundation and the Excellence Girls and Excellence Boys Charter Schools of Bedford-Stuyvesant; a director of The New York City Charter School Center; chair of the Robin Hood Foundation's Leadership Council; and a member of the President's Leadership Council at Dartmouth College, the Advisory Board for Columbia School of Business's Social Enterprise Program and the NY Public Library's Library Council.