Mary Murray, M.A. has dedicated her career to enhancing the well-being of children, youth, and families by strengthening community-based organizations. She founded MEMconsultants in 2001 to provide practical, effective, and culturally responsive consulting services that help organizations clarify their goals, use data to improve programs, and communicate their impact. Mary is known for her collaborative style, her grounding in empowerment evaluation, and her commitment to centering stakeholder voice—especially youth and communities whose perspectives are often underrepresented in traditional evaluations.
Over two decades of consulting, Mary has partnered with nonprofit organizations, museums, funders, and public agencies across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Her work spans program evaluation, strategic and community planning, logic model development, visitor studies, and data capacity-building. Across projects, Mary is deeply experienced in qualitative data collection, with a special emphasis on facilitating focus groups that surface nuanced insights and foster meaningful conversation among participants. She has sustained long-term evaluation partnerships with organizations focused on arts education, youth development, literacy, environmental learning, and community engagement, and she is valued for delivering clear, actionable insights that support organizational learning and mission-driven decision-making.
Before founding MEMconsultants, Mary spent nearly a decade in youth development and education organizations, including Teach For America as a special education teacher in rural North Carolina. She later served at a state agency in Illinois, where she managed capacity-building systems supporting more than 500 grantees, including school districts and grassroots organizations. This work provided firsthand insight into program delivery, staff training, and community partnerships — insights that inform her practical, grounded approach to evaluation and planning.
Mary holds an M.A. in Community and Prevention Research and brings a blend of methodological rigor, facilitation skill, and deep respect for community expertise to every project. Outside of work, she enjoys national park camping with her family, Seattle’s arts and comedy scene, and traveling whenever she can.
