A biologist who became a psychologist, and then built the classrooms the ideas implied.

Marsha Familaro Enright trained first as a biologist and then as a psychologist, and works where the two fields meet: what a living thing actually is, and how a mind becomes capable of judging for itself.

That question runs through everything she writes — through neuropsychology and the emotions, through what a Montessori classroom is really doing, through the conditions a free society needs in order to produce people who can think. She has been writing since 1991 — more than fifty essays and papers, and counting.

It also runs through what she builds. Rather than argue for an idea of education and leave it there, she keeps putting the ideas in rooms with actual students: first a Montessori school, then a discussion salon, then a residential seminar, and now Reliance College.

She has spoken at The Atlas Society Summer Seminar for more than twenty years, and hosted her own interview series, Conversations with Marsha. She lives and works in Chicago.

• EducationB.A. in Biology, Northwestern University · M.A. in Psychology, The New School for Social Research
• InstituteReason, Individualism, Freedom Institute (RIFI) — founder and president
• SchoolCouncil Oak Montessori School, Chicago — co-founder and president. Named among Chicago’s top private elementary schools by Chicago Magazine (2009, 2011)
• SalonThe New Intellectual Forum, a Chicago discussion salon she founded in 1988; it met until 2023
• CollegeReliance College — founder and president
• SubjectsEducation, Montessori, psychology, neuropsychology, biology, philosophy, freedom and culture, Great Books, literature and the arts