Mara Dorta

Professor Dorta has spent the past fourteen years working in higher education. She started her career in fundraising at NYU in 2006, and made the shift to student affairs in 2016. While working at NYU, she obtained her B.A. in Sociology in 2011 and her M.A. in Educational Leadership, Politics and Advocacy in 2019. As Program Administrator for the NYU Leadership Initiative, Professor Dorta supported multiple student development programs focused on uplifting students of color. She built transformative mentoring relationships with students while helping them build community across programs. It was during her tenure and studies at NYU that Professor Dorta realized her passion for serving and supporting historically marginalized students in navigating the high school to college transition. This passion is also what brought her to work at Sponsors for Educational Opportunity as a Saturday Academy Instructor in 2018 and subsequently as 11th Grade Program Manager in 2020. After graduating, Professor Dorta also began teaching as an Adjunct Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, serving mostly first year and transfer students. Her courses at John Jay help students build skills necessary to thrive in college. She is passionate about advocating for education equity and helping young people actualize their innate capacity to be agents of change. Outside of work, she enjoys, cycling and rediscovering New York, birdwatching and spending time with family.