Mary Antón, Ed.D. is a retired school principal with 18 years of experience leading in public and independent schools.  Mary received her doctorate from Harvard Graduate School of Education and works in the area of achievement motivation in the success of students of color and school leadership. 

Currently Mary is the Principal of Learning•Leading•Becoming Equity Leadership coaching and working with schools and individual leaders around the country who are interested in systemic school change geared towards dismantling racism.  Mary’s equity practice is focused on developing strong support for aspiring and practicing leaders of color, supporting schools as they move all educators to understand the ways that their own identities shape their practice, and moving institutions to dismantle institutional, interpersonal, internalized and ideological racism.  She leads virtual groups for educators on Keeping Race at the Center in the time of COVID-19 and virtual networking. Mary is co-founder of Schools Transforming a new non-profit that works with materials first developed in conjunction with the Reimagining Integration for Diverse and Equitable Schools (RIDES) project out of Harvard Graduate School of Education.  She leads work supporting schools as they establish strong DEI teams and guides schools through Equity Improvement processes.  A strong advocate of asset-based support for Emergent Bilinguals (students learning English beyond their home language), Mary teaches about second language acquisition and culturally proficient pedagogy for culturally and linguistically diverse learners at the graduate level, through Tufts University, Simmons University, Boston College. 

Mary serves as Chair on the Board of Directors for POCIS, (People of Color in Independent Schools, Nor.Cal). A proud Mexican-American, Mary is active in a number of organizations that foster the education and well-being of students of color and those from historically marginalized populations.

Mary is a consultant for AllSides for Schools, and believes that the key to successful work in equity is establishing multiple partnerships across different sectors – learning together through diverse perspectives. Mary’s practice in schools has been featured in articles in Usable Knowledge and is discussed in the book Unconscious Bias in Schools: A Developmental Approach to Exploring Race and Racism by Tracey Benson and Sarah Fiarman. Most recently Mary was featured in an interview about coaching in the June issue of The Learning Professional, Learning Forward’s Leadership magazine and guided two webinars on Keeping Race at the Center in the time of COVID19 for leaders across the country through Harvard Graduate School of Education which was featured in HGSE’s Usable Knowledge series June 24, 2020.  She has two recent articles published in The Learning Professional, one on virtual networks (February 2021) and Practical Tools for Dismantling Racism (June 2021).

A national and international presenter, Mary believes that the heart of good leadership is in establishing strong collaborative coaching and mentoring relationships with teachers and leaders so that through their inspiration, they can inspire others.