A graduate of the Witwatersrand Medical School in South Africa, Dr. Bergman is a specialist in internal medicine and pulmonary diseases at SUNY Downstate and Stony Brook, and practiced pulmonary medicine and critical care in Patchogue, NY from 1981 to 2013. Marion served as president of Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center’s Medical Staff and was medical director of respiratory care services for many years. Upon returning to graduate school at NYU's Wagner School, (MPA '06), Marion gave up hospital practice, while continuing medicine on a part-time basis.

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In addition to mentoring numerous medical students, she devotes much of her time and energy to rural health and development projects in the developing world as director of healthcare projects for Miracle Corners of the World, while serving as a trustee for the Global Child Dental Fund, American Jewish World Service and Physicians for Human Rights. Marion also serves as a governor of the American Jewish Committee and as a member of its Jacob Blaustein Institute for Human Rights Administrative Council, and she is a past president of its Long Island Region. She and her husband, Stanley, co-founded its Africa Institute, which Marion now chairs.

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She is an advisory board member of Tel Aviv University's Harold Hartog School of Government and Public Policy and a member of the board of visitors for Temple University’s Kornberg School of Dentistry. Marion also served as the treasurer of the board of directors of Medical Education for South African Blacks, which provided more than 8,000 scholarships to train black healthcare professionals in South Africa.