Massachusetts School Building Authority Director Mary Pichetti

Mary Pichetti, the newly appointed executive director of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), has always valued the idea of learning something new everyday. Growing up in West Roxbury, Pichetti attended Boston Latin Academy during the era when it transitioned into a co-ed institution. Pichetti was exposed to a school with twisting staircases and narrow hallways and sometimes even lackluster resources. However she credits her teachers for making their conditions work. Pichetti graduated from Smith College with a bachelor’s degree in biology. However, instead of pursuing a path into the sciences, Pichetti was drawn into the real estate industry in the South End, eventually wanting to manage live construction sites as she found new insights every day through her interactions with contractors, accountants, and even lawyers. Pichetti wanted her position to pave the path for women to be a larger part of the construction industry. Ten years into her job with private real estate, the market flipped for Pichetti and she found herself on the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority just as it had embarked on the reconstruction of the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant. Pichetti found herself in a complete new universe with the MWRA, having known nothing about the logistics and engineering behind sewage treatment. Eventually, Pichetti found her job with the MWRA repetitive, despite her senior position, and after a phone call from a former coworker, she found herself on the financial team on the newly formed Massachusetts School Building Authority, or in her words the best decision she ever made. The MSBA was founded to provide specialized resources to public school building construction in Massachusetts. Pichetti joined the MSBA in a time of turmoil as the organization had inherited hundreds of unfinished audits, half filed projects, and over 11 billion dollars of debt from the previous sector of the DESE. However, Pichetti embraced the issues as she describes her role of being “a problem solver“ inevitably attracted to facing problems. She enjoys the challenge of the MSBA and the ability to grant students the building and resources they need to learn. On July 1, 2023, having served as the Director of Capital Planning for the MSBA for over 15 years, Pichetti succeeded Jack McCarthy as the Executive Director which she finds as yet another new learning opportunity. Pichetti says that the way to avoid burnout in a job is not through always trying to rise up the ranks however, rather she says the key is to expand your insights by trying to learn new skills from your current position.