Megan Demarkis

Megan Demarkis, MSW (Silberman School of Social Work), is a bilingual educator, community organizer, and coalition builder with more than 25 years of experience in NYC public education, youth development, and immigrant advocacy. She has dedicated her career to building programs that expand access, dignity, and belonging for families navigating complex school, immigration, and social service systems. During her graduate studies, Megan was awarded the Hunter College Excellence in Community Organizing Award in both 2024 and 2025, recognizing her role in designing public-facing campaigns that uplift client voice and strengthen collective power.

Megan currently supports Hunter College’s faculty-led community engagement efforts through the Hunter-Wide Anchor Institutions Initiative, a strategy designed to deepen the college’s role as a long-term partner in Harlem. In this role, she works to cultivate and sustain relationships between faculty, students, and local organizations, helping build bridges between academic expertise and on-the-ground community knowledge. She facilitates collaboration on projects that advance mutual goals, increase student learning opportunities, and expand institutional responsiveness to neighborhood priorities. Her work emphasizes reliable partnership, democratic process, and shared decision-making, ensuring that community-based organizations are not simply “sites,” but collaborators who shape direction and outcomes.

Across her career—as a teacher, program director, consultant, and social work practitioner—Megan has designed multilingual family engagement systems, created college-to-career programming, led youth development initiatives from pilot to scale, and built coalition-based responses to community needs. Her practice integrates relationship-based leadership, participatory evaluation, and asset-driven program design, grounded in a belief that communities already hold the knowledge needed for change. She is committed to advancing institutional practices that move beyond charity models toward solidarity-based partnerships rooted in equity, voice, and shared power.

• BA in Languages and Literature from Bard College (95)
• MSW in Community Organizing and Policy from Silberman (2025)