Our Team

Maria (pronounced like ‘Mariah’) McCarthy is TPZ’s Senior Director of Institutional and Public Funding on the Development team. She leads TPZ’s efforts to obtain grant funding from private foundations and government agencies to support the organization’s mission.

Raised on a college campus by two educator parents, Maria has been passionate about education and committed to expanding access to high-quality educational opportunities for underserved students throughout her entire career. For over 10 years, she studied the impacts and advocated for improvements of educational programs and policies as a researcher at Abt Associates, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), and the Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE). She then took this learning into the field as a 4th and 5th grade teacher at an elementary school in Dorchester.

Maria loves forging connections between funders and exemplary educational programs that are transforming students’ lives and advancing economic equity. She got her first taste of fundraising while she was with Northeastern University helping to launch Foundation Year, an innovative program supporting BPS graduates’ successful transition to college. From there, she became a development consultant and grant writer, securing critical funding for several education nonprofits at pivotal stages of growth. Maria then spent six years at The Community Group (TCG), a nonprofit in Lawrence, MA that operates out-of-school time enrichment programs, public K-8 charter schools, and early childhood programs. As Director of Development at TCG, she secured and stewarded a mixed portfolio of public and private grants, with an emphasis on state education grants.

Maria holds a B.A. in Spanish and English from Tufts University, an M.P.A. in Education and Social Policy from the University of Washington, and an M.Ed. from UMass Boston. Maria believes that entrepreneurship is about seeing and seizing upon opportunities, taking risks to make them happen, and persevering through and learning from setbacks to continually improve. In her free time, Maria loves playing tennis, reading, dancing, traveling, and seeing live music. Most of all, she enjoys chatting and laughing over a long meal with her family and friends. She lives with her husband, two teenage children, and one spirited dog.