Marlene Canapi leads the Rotary Club of Pleasantville as its 2026-27 president, her second turn in the chair after being inducted by District Governor Syed Alirahi in November 2024. She came to the club in 2023 with a Rotary résumé already in hand: as immediate past president of the Rotary Club of Chappaqua she led that club through the pandemic, when meeting in person was all but impossible, and Chappaqua named her its 2023 Paul Harris Fellow for it.
Around the village she is best known as a founder of Arc Stages, the nonprofit theater at 147 Wheeler Avenue that puts a professional company, a community company and an education program under one roof. She served as its founding executive director and now sits on its board as chair emerita, and she has been the organization's growth strategist through its second-phase campaign for a 150-seat proscenium theater.
An arts destination
Years before Arc Stages, Marlene was part of the group of community leaders who wrote the village Master Plan to lift the downtown business district, with the goal of making Pleasantville an arts destination alongside the Jacob Burns Film Center and the Gordon Parks Foundation. She has co-organized the Pleasantville Music Festival and chaired the Master Plan's planning policy work.
At Rotary
As president she has pushed the club's fundraising toward the village itself. In 2026 the club rebranded its long-running spring tasting as Generous Pour Pleasantville and moved it from the Pace campus to the tent at Arc Stages, with sixteen local beneficiaries from the Pleasantville Farmers Market to the Mt. Pleasant Library. She also chairs membership, and the club's recent growth, with new members from the village board, the school district and local business, has followed.
On the Pancake Breakfast, which funds two $2,500 scholarships a year: "It's important to continue to invest in the future of our young adults who grew up here."
In pictures
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