Mary Call-Blanusa

Mary Call Blanusa is Director of Public Policy at The Alliance for Decision Education. Mary is committed to collaborative leadership, working with educators, education leaders, students and parents to build more equitable, effective education policy. She has over 20 years of experience in education nonprofits and philanthropy leading education policy and advocacy at the district state and national levels.

Before joining the Alliance, Mary was Executive Director at The Northern New Jersey Community Foundation where she designed and led community engagement and advocacy efforts focused on addressing climate change and expanding public art. She served as Senior Director of Strategy at America Achieves bringing together philanthropy, local non-profits, educators, start-ups, and international corporations, such as Amazon and Uber, to design integrated education to workforce programs serving low to moderate income youth and adults. Mary was a Program Officer at The Helmsley Charitable Trust where she led policy, advocacy and communications grantmaking in the education portfolio. She has led collective impact initiatives, working with colleagues from major US philanthropies, education nonprofits, and educator, student, and parent voice organizations to build and advocate for equitable education policies. Mary served in a number of programmatic and leadership roles at the Council for Economic Education, most recently as Vice President of Government Relations and Partnerships expanding access to economic and financial literacy education in classrooms across the nation. She began her career as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English and environmental education to middle school students in Hungary.

Mary holds a Master’s degree from the Heller School of Public Policy at Brandeis University and a Bachelor’s degree from American University. She currently serves on the board of Seek Common Ground and as Board Chair of The English Learners Success Forum.

In her free time, Mary enjoys travel and live music and ideally travel to see live music and festivals.