Mary T. Perez (they/she) serves as Associate Chaplain for Christian and Interfaith Life. Mary’s ecumenical background draws from Catholic and Lutheran traditions with formative roots in contemplative practices and liberatory theologies. As a chaplain, they are passionate about offering students a nonjudgmental space for exploring deep questions and making meaning in the complexity of their college journeys.
As a Christian minister, Mary centers the radical hospitality and kinship that Jesus embodied. They draw on their own experience as a queer, mixed-race, gender-expansive person to understand the complex dynamics of power and oppression, joy and hope in religious communities. Mary loves the internal diversity of Christianity and seeks to support a rich tapestry of diverse Christian liturgical, ritual, and prayerful experiences at Carleton.
As an educator, Mary has taught in Catholic elementary and high schools in Washington DC, Tennessee, and California. A member of the Order of Preachers for a decade, she was a vowed Catholic Dominican Sister, serving in youth and campus ministry in northern and southern California. Mary studied theology and Scripture at Santa Clara University and the Graduate Theological Union and completed a Master of Divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School (’22). She holds a BA in anthropology and music from Stanford University (’05) and a MA in Teaching from Christian Brothers University (’08).
Mary lives in Minneapolis, MN and facilitates professional learning around inclusion, diversity, equity, access and leadership in the IDEAL Center at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Mary cultivates healing and joy through music-making, journaling, being near water, and deep listening to friends, birds, and silence.
At Carleton since 2024.