Paula Paris

Paula Paris is the chief operating and development officer of a Boston-based nonprofit organization and was an adjunct professor at Southern New Hampshire University. She was raised in Cambridge and graduated from Cambridge High and Latin School. Paula earned an MBA from Brandeis University. Her undergraduate degree from the University of Hartford’s Hartt School is in Music History and Performance Practice. There, she studied with and was mentored by jazz artist Jackie McLean. She taught music and dance at the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts, where she was the assistant director of the music department. In addition to Cambridge history, her research interests include jazz history, Black classical composers, and people of African and Indigenous descent in Canada’s Maritime Provinces, where her father and his family were from. Paula is a Cambridge Historical Commissioner, former vice president of the Cambridge Historical Society (now History Cambridge), a board member of Black History in Action for Cambridgeport, and recording secretary for the Slave Legacy History Coalition.