HWS News
24 March 2026 • Alums Investing Early
Biology major turned global marketing executive Linda Arrington ’88 brings a scientist’s discipline — and a young leader’s foresight — to a planned gift investing in HWS’ future.
When Trustee Linda Arrington ’88 talks about marketing, she sounds as much like a scientist as she does a brand executive.
Long before she stepped into her marketing leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase & Co., The Estée Lauder Companies, CHANEL and Benetton Group, Arrington was a biology major on the pre-med track at Hobart and William Smith. That scientific training, she says, never left her.
Now Regional Head of Marketing — Americas at UBS, the world’s largest bank, Arrington says marketing is “an art and a science,” blending analytics and creativity to connect with clients in meaningful, measurable ways. Arrington has a creative and analytical mind, which she attributes to her mother, a professor, and father, a filmmaker.
“The scientific method is hypothesis testing,” Arrington explains. “You challenge your assumptions. You build a thesis. You test it. You measure the results.”
Her parents also inspired Arrington and her sister to engage deeply, to leave the world better than they found it.
Since she was a 27-year-old rising executive, Arrington has donated her time and money to HWS. After graduate school at Columbia University, Arrington began returning regularly to HWS to serve as a member of the William Smith Alumnae Council from 1991 to 1993 and again from 2001 to 2009. She has been a member of the HWS Board of Trustees since 2001.
This year, after 33 years of annual donations, Arrington has pledged a $400,000 planned gift to the Wheeler Society, which was established in 1989 at HWS to encourage planned giving, otherwise known as estate or legacy giving.
HWS has been a constant across her career, which has moved fluidly from banking to cosmetics to fashion. She says that is due in large part to her liberal arts education and the open-minded approach she learned at HWS. In the classroom, Arrington learned to think multidimensionally, to see issues from more than one side and to remain open to change. An M.B.A. later added technical depth, but the intellectual flexibility began in Geneva.
“When you have a more open-minded lens, you avail yourself to more opportunities,” Arrington says.
She imparts lessons like this to the HWS students she has mentored through decades of work with Hobart and William Smith. She has chaired the Annual Fund, participated as a panelist in the Multicultural Networking Conference and as a keynote speaker for past NYC Fashion Experience career treks organized by the Salisbury Center for Career, Professional and Experiential Education.
After graduation, she threw herself into her education and career, while also choosing to invest in her alma mater early on. She carries that same forward-thinking approach today, making a planned gift at the peak of her career.
To Arrington, it makes perfect sense: “HWS has been one of the most rewarding things in my life I’ve been able to be a part of.”
Today at UBS, she works in the most competitive wealth markets in the world. The stakes are high. In the U.S. wealth landscape alone Arrington says approximately $84 trillion worth of wealth is being transferred from one generation to the next creating a marketing battleground among top global and local players.
Yet for all the scale of her current responsibilities, and the career path she took, Arrington traces many of her professional milestones back to HWS. A spring break internship with an alumnus, for example, opened the door to her first banking role.
“HWS has been present at every step,” she says. “I owe so much to this community.”
Raised in a family rooted in service — her grandfather helped advance voting rights initiatives and participated in national programs such as Job Corps and the Peace Corps — Arrington grew up with the belief that success carries responsibility. “Leave a place better than you found it,” she says. “Lift others up.”
A planned gift, for her, is a natural extension of that philosophy, reflecting her confidence in the HWS leadership, in its faculty and its students.
Top: Trustee Linda Arrington ’88
