Mary Perez

IDEAL Center Project Lead

Mary Perez (she/they) is an educator and consultant, committed to liberation through anti-oppressive praxis in systems change and community building. They joined the IDEAL Center in 2022, bringing a lens of racial justice and healing that they have cultivated in their studies and personal experience. 

Mary has taught in middle and high school classrooms in Maryland, Tennessee, and California. With The Institute for Anti-Racist Education, she served as a program manager, providing support for anti-racist professional development for schools, educators, and teaching artists.

During their graduate studies in race and religion, they focused on the intersection of anti-racist education and religious literacy in formal and informal learning spaces. This led them to consulting work in religious literacy with Boston Children’s Museum. 

Mary draws on their own experience as a queer, mixed-race, gender-expansive person to understand the complex dynamics of power and oppression, and community and liberation. She and her partner live in Minneapolis with their pup, Cam. She cultivates healing and joy through music-making, journaling, being near water, and deep listening to friends, birds, and silence.