Catherine (Cathy) Wolford Spinella graduated from William & Mary in 1979, double majoring in Economics and German. While at William & Mary, she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Chi Omega, and the international economics honor fraternity Omicron Delta Epsilon. After graduating from William & Mary, she received a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service to pursue graduate studies at the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhems Universitaet in Bonn.
Catherine began her career in econometric forecasting, and then worked for over a decade in domestic and international telecommunications marketing for Bell Atlantic (now Verizon). After leaving Bell Atlantic, Catherine worked for many years as a technical writer for the Board of Directors of the World Bank. When her family relocated to northern New Jersey in 2003 after two decades in the Washington metropolitan area, Catherine pursued a lifelong dream and returned to graduate school to earn a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University, and later a Master’s Degree in Educational Technology from Ramapo College of New Jersey. She happily served as a Middle School librarian for 15 years in the West Essex Regional School District. In addition, she has pursued her interest in archival librarianship as a leader in her church’s Archives Committee, organizing, cataloguing and documenting over 150 years of church history. Catherine is married to Michael “Mike” Spinella ’78, another William & Mary graduate. Mike served on the William & Mary Library Board from 2012 to 2017.