Rosemary Scanlon (nee MacLellan) was born and educated in Nova Scotia, earning her undergraduate degree at St. Francis Xavier University and her master's degree in economics from the University of New Brunswick, Canada, where she was a Ford Foundation Scholar.
Rosemary moved to the United States in 1960 to begin a career as an economist, teaching at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, then at Old Dominion College in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1969, she moved to Manhattan as an economist with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and was appointed chief economist in 1983. During 1997-1999, she was a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics and in 2011 dean of the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate.
Rosemary lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she raised her son, Sean, and daughter, Jennifer.
