For almost 30 years, Mary Gallagher has supported award-winning faculty members and their labs in the same way she tends the soil beneath her garden. In both, she pairs diligence and experience with a delight in the way that interconnected ecosystems contribute to the growth of a plant, or an idea, seeded in the right place.
Gallagher, a senior administrative assistant in the Department of Biology, has spent much of her career at MIT. Her mastery in navigating the myriad tasks required by administrators, and her ability to build connections, have supported and elevated everyone she interacts with, at the Institute and beyond.
Oh, the people you’ll know
Gallagher didn’t start her career at MIT. Her first role following graduation from the University of Vermont in the early 1980s was at a nearby community arts center, where she worked alongside a man who would become a household name in American politics.
“This guy had just been elected mayor, shockingly, of Burlington, Vermont, by under 100 votes, unseating the incumbent. He went in and created this arts council and youth office,” Gallagher recalls.
That political newcomer was none other than a young Bernie Sanders, now the longest-serving independent senator in U.S. congressional history.
Gallagher arrived at MIT in 1996, becoming an administrative assistant (aka “lab admin”) in what was then called the MIT Energy Laboratory. Shortly after her arrival, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems Ernest Moniz transformed the laboratory into the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI).
Gallagher quickly learned how versatile the work of an administrator can be. As MITEI rapidly grew, she interacted with people across campus and its vast array of disciplines at the Institute, including mechanical engineering, political science, and economics.
“Admin jobs at MIT are really crazy because of the depth of work that we’re willing to do to support the institution. I was hired to do secretarial work, and next thing I know, I was traveling all the time, and planning a five-day, 5,000-person event down in D.C.,” Gallagher says. “I developed crazy computer and event-planner skills.”
Although such tasks may seem daunting to some, Gallagher has been thrilled with the opportunities she’s had to meet so many people and develop so many new skills. As a lab admin in MITEI for 18 years, she mastered navigating MIT administration, lab finances, and technical support. When Moniz left MITEI to lead the U.S. Department of Energy under President Obama, she moved to the Department of Biology at MIT.
Mutual thriving
Over the years, Gallagher has fostered the growth of students and colleagues at MIT, and vice versa.
Friend and former colleague Samantha Farrell recalls her first days at MITEI as a rather nervous and very “green” temp, when Gallagher offered an excellent cappuccino from Gallagher’s new Nespresso coffee machine.
“I treasure her friendship and knowledge,” Farrell says. “She taught me everything I needed to know about being an admin and working in research.”
Gallagher’s experience has also set faculty across the Institute up for success.
According to one principal investigator she currently supports, Novartis Professor of Biology Leonard Guarente, Gallagher is “extremely impactful and, in short, an ideal administrative assistant.”
Similarly, professor of biology Daniel Lew is grateful that her extensive MIT experience was available as he moved his lab to the Institute in recent years. “Mary was invaluable in setting up and running the lab, teaching at MIT, and organizing meetings and workshops,” Lew says. “She is a font of knowledge about MIT.”
A willingness to share knowledge, resources, and sometimes a cappuccino, is just as critical as a willingness to learn, especially at a teaching institution like MIT. So it goes without saying that the students at MIT have left their mark on Gallagher in turn — including teaching her how to format a digital table of contents on her very first day at MIT.
“Working with undergrads and grad students is my favorite part of MIT. Their generosity leaves me breathless,” says Gallagher. “No matter how busy they are, they’re always willing to help another person.”
Campus community
Gallagher cites the decline in community following the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown as one of her most significant challenges.
Prior to Covid, Gallagher says, “MIT had this great sense of community. Everyone had projects, volunteered, and engaged. The campus was buzzing, it was a hoot!”
She nurtured that community, from active participation in the MIT Women’s League to organizing an award-winning relaunch of Artist Behind the Desk. This subgroup of the MIT Working Group for Support Staff Issues hosted lunchtime recitals and visual art shows to bring together staff artists around campus, for which the group received a 2005 MIT Excellence Award for Creating Connections.
Moreover, Gallagher is an integral part of the smaller communities within the labs she supports.
Professor of biology and American Cancer Society Professor Graham Walker, yet another Department of Biology faculty member Gallagher supports, says, “Mary’s personal warmth and constant smile has lit up my lab for many years, and we are all grateful to have her as such a good colleague and friend.”
She strives to restore the sense of community that the campus used to have, but recognizes that striving for bygone days is futile.
“You can never go back in time and make the future what it was in the past,” she says. “You have to reimagine how we can make ourselves special in a new way.”
Spreading her roots
Gallagher’s life has been inextricably shaped by the Institute, and MIT, in turn, would not be what it is if not for Gallagher’s willingness to share her wisdom on the complexities of administration alongside the “joie de vivre” of her garden’s butterflies.
She recently bought a home in rural New Hampshire, trading the buzzing crowds of campus for the buzzing of local honeybees. Her work ethic is reflected in her ongoing commitment to curiosity, through reading about native plant life and documenting pollinating insects as they wander about her flowers.
Just as she can admire each bug and flower for the role it plays in the larger system, Gallagher has participated in and contributed to a culture of appreciating the role of every individual within the whole.
“At MIT’s core, they believe that everybody brings something to the table,” she says. “I wouldn’t be who I am if I didn’t work at MIT and meet all these people.”