Patrice McConnell Cromwell, vice president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Center for Economic Opportunity and an avid squash player, died Aug. 27 at her Ruxton home. She was 62.

“While our hearts are broken by Patrice’s passing, we are forever grateful for the lasting mark she has made on the Annie E. Casey Foundation, our work and our culture,” said Lisa M. Hamilton, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Daughter of Judge Vincent McConnell, a family court judge in Brooklyn, New York, and Jane McConnell, a registered nurse and lawyer who later became head of risk management for the University of Maryland Medical System, she was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

Ms. Cromwell was a graduate of St. Ann’s School, The Dalton School and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1988 from Princeton University. She obtained a master’s degree in business in 1988 from the Yale School of Management.

While at Yale, she met and fell in love with David Cromwell, a medical student, and they married in 1989 at the Princeton University Chapel.

Ms. Cromwell’s business career began in 1984 when she was a public finance analyst for First Boston Corp., and she subsequently held positions with Goldman Sachs & Co. and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Moving to Baltimore with her husband, she joined former Mayor William Donald Schaefer’s 1990 gubernatorial campaign as project coordinator. For the next decade, she was an independent management consultant, and in 2000, she was named associate director and senior program fellow for the Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

Since 2005, she had been vice president for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Center for Economic Opportunity.

“She was effective not only because of her considerable expertise but because of a passion and light that inspired others,” Hamilton wrote in a note to the Casey staff.

“I think anytime someone met Patrice, she changed them a bit,” said Richard Berndt, a senior partner at the Baltimore law firm Gallagher Evelius & Jones. “She was open-minded and cared about day-to-day injustice.”

While growing up in Brooklyn Heights, Ms. Cromwell began playing squash, and when she was a teenager, she and her sister, Alicia, traveled to Sweden to participate in the first-ever World Junior Championships as members of the American girls’ team, which won the gold medal.

At Princeton, she twice captained national championship-winning teams and earned a sixth individual national ranking.

She helped expand the squash community at the now-closed Meadow Mill Athletic Club in Woodberry. In 2010, she and Alicia won a national U.S. squash doubles championship together.

Ms. Cromwell helped establish the first squash team at McDonogh School and was its captain for many years. She was inducted into the Maryland Squash Hall of Fame in 2018.

Ms. Cromwell had not retired at her death. “She was still performing tasks two days before she died,” her husband said.

A celebration of life service was held at the M&T Bank Exchange at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center in downtown Baltimore.

In addition to her husband, a gastroenterologist, she is survived by a son, David Cromwell Jr. of Ruxton; two daughters, Caitlin Cromwell and Mae Cromwell, both of Billings, Montana; her mother, Jane Cromwell of Roland Park; a brother, Dr. Michael McConnell of Los Altos, California; a sister, Alicia McConnell of Durrus, Ireland; and a granddaughter.