Mari Gray, PhD Faculty Profile

Dr. Mariama Smith Gray is a veteran educational leader, teacher, researcher, digital storyteller and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at California State University, East Bay. She has dedicated her career to studying, teaching and researching the factors that contribute to educational inequity. Dr. Gray is the 2024 recipient of the Ollie V. Greene Humanitarian Award and 2021 CSU East Bay Outstanding Scholar on Issues of Diversity, Social Justice & Multiculturalism. Her research interests are in socio-spatial inequity in education, including the discourses, beliefs, policies and practices that schools use to create and maintain inequitable, anti-Black, anti-Latinx and white supremacist spaces in schools; how educator’s beliefs moderate student access to educational opportunity; and evidence based pedagogies for preparing abolitionist educational leaders. Dr. Gray is the Principal Investigator of the Great Migration Study, a mixed methods study that examines the educational experiences and survivance of African Americans who attended Northern California schools during the Great Migration, 1910-1970. 

• Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis in Language, Literacy and Culture, University of California, Davis
• M.A. Educational Leadership and Preliminary Administrative Services Credential, The San Jose State University
• M.A. Education, Professional Clear Credential in Spanish, and CLAD Credential, Stanford University
• B.A. Latin American Studies with honors. B.A. Spanish Literature and Society, Stanford University

Link to Google Scholar