Maryann Misiolek is a real estate investment professional, industrial engineer, and finance manager based in Hummelstown and Hershey, Pennsylvania. She is known for owning and operating MarDav Enterprises, a family real estate business focused on rehabilitating properties and managing rentals across Central Pennsylvania.
Maryann Misiolek’s work is easiest to understand through before-and-after. Not as a TV reveal, not as a moment made for applause, but as a method that repeats: a distressed property, a plan, weeks of decisions, and a result that holds up to daily life. In Central Pennsylvania, where neighborhoods are shaped by small routines and long histories, the transformation can be subtle. A roofline that looks cared for again. A porch that is usable. A property that shifts from being a question mark to being part of the street.
The process has been part of her world for a long time. MarDav Enterprises began in 2001 and was officially incorporated in 2007 by Misiolek and her husband, J. David Misiolek, who goes by Dave. It sits in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, and operates in the Central Pennsylvania area with two clear tracks: rehabilitation and renovation of properties, and the ongoing work of maintaining and managing a portfolio of rentals.
The popular images of renovation can make the job look like a sequence of dramatic decisions. Her work reads more like steady problem-solving. The same person who studied industrial engineering and management science has spent years moving through practical constraints: budgets, timelines, maintenance needs, and the long tail of ownership, where a property is not finished when the paint dries.
A life like this does not announce itself. It accumulates.
Work as a lens
MarDav’s stated goal is to improve local communities through transformative rehabilitation projects. That can sound broad until it is anchored in the daily choices the work requires. Renovation is a craft of tradeoffs. Each project asks what to save, what to replace, and what to plan for later. Each rental property asks for care without drama, the kind that keeps a home functional and stable.
Misiolek describes MarDav as doing the kind of property rehabilitation people recognize from home renovation shows, but with a key difference: the work started long before it became a familiar genre. The comparison is less a marketing line than a framing device for outsiders. It tells you what the work looks like without asking you to already know the language of real estate investment.
The business is also a family partnership. It is owned and operated by Misiolek and Dave, and it works closely with her sister, Trudy Stewart, who is a realtor. They have a nickname for the collaboration: the sold sisters. In practice, that means a feedback loop between renovation and resale, between what a property needs and how it will eventually be presented to the market.
That relationship matters because it suggests an approach built on coordination. Rehabilitation is not just construction. It is also sequencing, timing, and handoffs between different kinds of expertise. A realtor’s view of layout, light, and buyer expectations can influence what gets prioritized. An investor’s view of durability and long-term costs can push back against choices that are attractive but fragile.
Misiolek’s role, as owner, sits at the center of those decisions. The work calls for both strategic thinking and physical presence. The phrase she uses about not being afraid to get her hands dirty is not offered as a slogan in this context. It reads more like a practical requirement of the job.
The engineer’s training
Misiolek’s education is specific and layered. She graduated from Lower Dauphin High School in 1995. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University in 1999, then a Master’s Degree in Management Science in 2000. In college, she received recognition and membership that signal both achievement and belonging in technical spaces: Iacocca Scholar, Presidential Scholar, Alpha Pi Mu, and the Society of Women Engineers.
Those details matter because they suggest how she learned to see systems. Industrial engineering is not just about math. It is about making processes work. Management science extends that thinking into decisions under uncertainty, where data and judgment meet.
Real estate rehabilitation does not show up on most engineering syllabi. Still, the habits transfer. There is a logic to diagnosing a property. There is a logic to planning a sequence of repairs. There is a logic to budgeting, prioritizing, and adjusting when the site reveals something you did not know.
The background also points to another kind of skill: comfort with complexity. Renovation projects are rarely clean. A distressed property can hide problems, from structural issues to outdated systems. Ownership means living with that uncertainty and building a practice that can handle it repeatedly.
Misiolek’s listed topic interests include entrepreneurship and logistical organization. In the context of her career, those themes feel connected. Entrepreneurship can be romanticized as constant risk-taking. Here it looks like consistency. It looks like showing up over years, turning a local business into something that can sustain a portfolio.
Early influences and a practical upbringing
Some biographies begin with a single origin moment. Misiolek’s early life reads more like a set of building blocks. Her parents, Rose and Stephen, who goes by Steve, are from Centralia, Pennsylvania. Her father owned M&S Auto Center in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. She grew up with two younger sisters, Trudy Stewart and Lisa Seaman. She played tennis and practiced Tae Kwon Do. She joined choir, ecology club, and Spanish. She worked at Hersheypark and McDonald’s.
These details show a person moving through multiple environments: sports, school activities, part-time work, family business. They suggest a rhythm of responsibility early on, and a familiarity with hands-on work.
A father who owned an auto center offers a particular kind of backdrop. It is a business where systems matter, where mechanical problems get diagnosed, where outcomes are visible in performance. It is also a place where you learn that work has a physical side and a customer side, and that neither can be ignored.
The mix of tennis and Tae Kwon Do suggests discipline in different forms. Tennis is repetition and precision. Martial arts is repetition and control. Choir suggests teamwork, listening, and the ability to blend into a larger sound. Ecology club hints at curiosity about how environments function, how small changes ripple outward.
None of this proves a life path. But it provides context for someone who later builds a career on steady attention and long projects.
Independence and a clear boundary
A notable element of Misiolek’s career notes is what she does not want emphasized. She explicitly states that she does not want any affiliation with her former employer, The Hershey Company. The insistence is part of the fact pattern, and it carries weight.
In a town and region where Hershey is a dominant name, independence is not just a business choice. It is a positioning. It says: this work stands on its own. The identity is not borrowed.
Misiolek frames her professional life around her own business, MarDav Enterprises, run with her husband, focused on rehabilitation, rentals, and resale. The line is clear, and the clarity itself becomes a character detail. It suggests a person who is deliberate about how her story is told, and who values accuracy in that telling.
This boundary also underscores a theme that runs through her interviews. She returns to the idea of doing the right thing even when no one is looking. She returns to not worrying about what others may think. She returns to consistency and dedication. These are not presented as inspirational slogans in her materials. They appear as practical rules that make a life feel manageable.
A person who builds a business on long timelines often needs rules like that. Renovation does not reward impatience. Rentals do not reward neglect. The work punishes shortcuts quietly, later.
The long middle of leadership
MarDav’s timeline matters. Started in 2001. Incorporated in 2007. Still operating now, with rentals managed and maintained across the region. That span contains the long middle that most stories skip: years when the work is not new, and it is not finished. The business becomes routine, and routine becomes the real test.
Misiolek’s leadership shows up most clearly in the volume and variety of her community involvement. She is chairperson of Helping Hands, a volunteer organization connected to St. Ann Byzantine Catholic Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She is also a member of the church’s finance council. Her volunteering includes Ronald McDonald House and a long stretch with Lower Dauphin Girls Youth Basketball, where she has been involved since 2015 and served as Director of Operations from 2017 to 2022. She is also secretary and a founding member of the Lower Dauphin Girls Tennis Booster Club. She has volunteered in school educational and fundraising activities, including an education volunteer role at South Hanover Elementary School from September 2011 to June 2021.
This is not a light add-on. It reads like a parallel system of work, one built on service and logistics.
Helping Hands, as described in her LinkedIn featured section, serves the parish, the poor in the local community, and the orphans of Ukraine. In her role, she manages a group of volunteers to support activities such as serving at a soup kitchen, homeless shelters, and mercy meals. On the finance council, she conducts financial guidance and analysis of cost-saving opportunities for the church community.
The pattern is consistent: operational roles, service roles, roles that require coordination. It mirrors what she does in her business life, but in a different setting.
It also suggests a leadership style that is less about visibility and more about making things work. Concession stand lead. Booster club secretary. Director of operations. These are jobs that are usually thankless until they are not done.
Outside formal volunteer roles, her interests include power yoga, running races in the area, and working out regularly at Planet Fitness. She is a vendor at Treasures on Main, an antique and craft store. She loves to travel with her family, listing destinations that range from Lake Stonycreek and Rehoboth Beach in Delaware to Canada, Greece, Europe, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras.
Together, those details add texture. They point to a person with both structured commitments and outlets that require movement. Running and yoga are discipline and release. Travel suggests curiosity and family time, a way to step outside the familiar grid of work and community schedules.
A philosophy built around time
Misiolek’s interview responses are notable for the way they treat time. She describes success as living a fulfilling life, being surrounded by people you love and who love you, not worrying about what others may think, and doing the right thing even when no one is looking. Later, she describes a shift in motivation: in younger years, motivation came from within, without competing or comparing herself to others. As her family grew, her husband and children became her biggest motivation, especially the goal of reaching a point where work did not rule her life. Her motto is simple: work to live, not live to work.
These statements can be read as values, but they also read as an operating system. For someone who owns a business, work can expand endlessly. Rentals do not stop needing maintenance. Projects can always be refined. There is always another property, another decision, another risk to evaluate.
Her answers suggest she has drawn a line around what work is allowed to take. The goal is not to eliminate ambition. The goal is to place it in service of a life that includes family and community, not a life consumed by a business.
Her advice to younger generations extends the time theme further. She frames her preparation for independent business ownership as something she pursued since graduating college. She advises not wasting the decade of the twenties, emphasizing that time is on your side then. She urges investing early and working hard early so that you can be financially and personally stable in your forties, able to relieve pressure and enjoy the life you have created. She notes that many people do not get their act together until their thirties, which she frames as oftentimes too late, and calls the twenties critical for getting onto a trajectory of success.
Even without embellishment, this is a clear worldview. It treats life as something you build through compounding, not through one big moment. It treats stability as something earned by earlier choices. It aligns with her work in real estate, an industry where returns often come from patience, and where the cost of delay can be high.
The connecting thread
If there is a single thread running through Misiolek’s profile, it is the idea of repair as a form of stewardship.
In her business, repair is literal. Distressed properties get rehabilitated and renovated. Rentals are maintained and managed over time. The work is local, centered on Central Pennsylvania, with a stated aim of improving communities through transformation that lasts.
In her volunteer work, repair is social. Helping Hands supports those in need through meals and outreach. Financial analysis on the finance council aims to find cost-saving opportunities. Youth sports and school volunteering support structures around children, families, and community life.
In her personal philosophy, repair is internal. She points to not worrying about what others think, to doing the right thing when no one is looking, to consistency and perseverance, to building networks of trust. She describes a shift toward valuing time with her family and refusing to let work dominate.
None of this requires a grand narrative to connect it. The facts already form a portrait of someone who tends to systems, who improves what is in front of her, and who believes life works better when effort is steady and aligned.
In an era that rewards constant broadcasting, Misiolek’s story is a reminder that many lives are built in quieter ways. Her work sits in the long-term economy of neighborhoods, where the condition of housing shapes daily life more than most people admit. Property rehabilitation, rental management, and resale are often discussed in financial terms, but the lived impact is concrete. A home is safe. A street looks cared for. A community keeps its rhythm.
Her approach also offers a simple lesson about independence and clarity. She draws a firm boundary around what she wants associated with her name. She centers her identity on the work she does now, through her own business and her community roles. That kind of clarity is increasingly rare, and it matters when personal narratives are so easy to blur.
