Mary Tamer is a longtime education advocate and Democratic activist who is a product of the Boston Public Schools (BPS), a former BPS parent, a former member of the Boston School Committee, and past president of the League of Women Voters of Boston.
Prior to joining DFER, Mary worked for SchoolFacts Boston as the Education Research Director conducting reviews and leading dissemination of key metrics related to the Boston Public Schools, including oversight of the $1.3B budget, enrollment trends, and student outcomes and opportunities, with a primary focus on low-income populations, students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners. While working for the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association in 2016, Mary oversaw the creation and launch of a unified online application for Boston's charter schools that tripled the number of applications in its first year of operation. As president of the League of Women Voters of Boston, Mary led the League's oldest chapter in the nation and facilitated voter registration drives and voter information efforts across the city. In 2021, Mary ran as a first-time Boston City Council District 6 candidate, raising more than $185,000 and receiving more than 11,000 votes in the highly competitive race.
A dual citizen in the U.S. and Lebanon, Mary is the daughter of an Arabic-speaking English Learner, the sister of a high school dropout, and was a Boston Public School student eligible for free lunch during Boston’s desegregation efforts, all of which shaped her worldview, as well as her deliberate path toward education equity.