Marianne Drost is senior vice president, deputy general counsel and corporate secretary for Verizon, responsible for the corporate secretary function and for the following legal functions: strategic transactions, securities and finance, SEC reporting and disclosure and corporate governance. She has played a key role in developing Verizon's corporate governance policies and in the legal aspects of major strategic transactions including the acquisition of MCI and the disposition of Verizon's Latin American and Caribbean properties.

Drost was formerly vice president-deputy general counsel and corporate secretary for GTE. In that role, Drost was responsible for the practice groups providing legal advice on international and domestic strategic transactions, finance, securities law, public affairs, real estate, leasing, investment management, insurance and commercial transactions. In addition, she was responsible for supporting the requirements of GTE's Board of Directors and for corporate governance and shareholder operations.

Drost joined the GTE Legal Department in 1977. She left GTE to become a senior attorney in the Legal Department of Cheesebrough-Pond's Inc. in 1984, returning to GTE in 1985 as corporate secretary. She was named to the additional position of vice president and associate general counsel in 1991. Prior to joining GTE, she was associated with the Hartford, Conn. law firm of Ritter, Tapper and Totten.

Drost is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Connecticut College in New London and received her doctor of jurisprudence degree with honors from the University of Connecticut School of Law.

She is a former director and past president of the Fairfield-Westchester Chapter of the American Society of Corporate Secretaries and a past director of Literacy Volunteers of America. She is also a member of the American Society of Corporate Secretaries, the American Bar Association and the Westchester-Fairfield Corporate Counsel Association.

March 2008