Mari Gray, PhD Faculty Profile

Mari  Gray, PhD

Associate Professor

Department of Educational Leadership

Mariama Smith Gray, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership. She has thirty years of experience teaching and leading schools, departments, programs and organizations in Northern California, including two California Distinguished Schools. An award-winning educator and researcher, Dr. Gray’s scholarship examines the policies, practices and systems that contribute to enduring educational inequities for minoritized students. Her latest project, , examines the survivance of African Americans who attended Northern California schools. 

Dr. Mariama Smith Gray is a veteran educational leader, teacher, researcher, digital storyteller and Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at 麻豆传媒社区入口, 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 , 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

Not teaching this semester.