COM MUNITY
MEET
Amy Marks
Shore’s New President of the Board of Trustees
“E
quity and inclusion work is at the heart of everything I do,” says Amy Marks, Shore’s new President of the Board of Trustees. “It’s central to me; it’s central to how I see the world.” A professor and the former Chair of the Psychology Department at Suffolk University in Boston, Marks is a developmental psychologist whose work focuses on understanding youth development in marginalized and oppressed social groups. “When I was approached about taking the board president role, I thought it was a great opportunity to help move the school forward strategically—from admissions to finances—while weaving equity and inclusion into everything.” With two daughters at Shore, in grades five and seven, Marks admits she has a deeply personal interest in doing this work at Shore: “I want to help build an environment at the school that they can be proud of.” A native of the
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SHORE BU LLET IN FA LL 2021
North Shore, Marks has experience working on issues of equity and inclusion with other nonprofits in the region. “I love it here, but we have a long way to go when it comes to building more access and opportunity into what we’re doing, whether it’s at Shore or other organizations around the North Shore.” Growing up multicultural— white on her mother’s side, Native American on her father’s—Marks saw and experienced racism and discrimination firsthand. That experience, combined with a lifelong love of science, gave rise to a career dedicated to research around issues of social justice and children. “I’ve been studying things like discrimination and
racism for about 20 years. I’ve always been motivated by questions like, what are the impacts on children’s health? What are the impacts on children’s well-being or their educational outcomes?” Similar questions come to mind when Marks surveys the independent school landscape, including Shore. “These are institutions that were largely built to sidestep the public school system or to serve a client base that could afford to send their often white male students to private school—creating a separate class of institution. And so what we’re trying to do now in 2021 is chip away at that system by asking hard questions of ourselves: In what ways have we caused harm?
“Equity and inclusion work is at the heart of everything I do. It’s central to me; it’s central to how I see the world.” —Amy Marks, President of the Board of Trustees
