Marty Pack is a philosopher, filmmaker, public health expert, and educator. Ms. Pack is an Intellectual Creative with a vision. Through academic and investigative research, she brings a level of compassion to tell an honest story. Her desire to educate fuels her drive to teach the underlying causes of marginalization.
She combines her academic expertise in humanities with an artistic vision to create educational documentaries exploring the ways in which power is exercised through religious, educational, healthcare, and other institutions.
She majored in Women’s Studies for three years before finishing her self-directed degree in Communication/Production through the University Without Walls program at Northeastern Illinois University, graduating Summa Cum Laude. She holds a masters in Political Science with a focus on Philosophy, specifically Hannah Arendt’s work on power and violence. Her current academic focus is on health and Public Administration. Her most loved education was improv at the Second City in Chicago. Women’s Studies and Philosophy are the lenses she has used in her academic and film careers to push humanities work forward.
Ms. Pack has done groundbreaking research on religion as it relates to domestic violence. Her thesis explored Orthodoxy and Catholicism in Eastern Europe and the attack on women’s rights. This research was the first of its kind. She continued her research on Catholicism and domestic violence with an anthropological qualitative study exploring Catholic priests in the U.S. to understand the limited domestic violence advocacy within the institution and the good work done by a few parishes.
Her production The Take Over of Testing was the first to show the marginalization of Black and Brown communities using the eugenics policies of the testing movement. The film revealed the historical connections between marginalization using standardized testing and the implementation of these same education policies starting with “No Child Left Behind.” Through this film, she was one of the first to educate the community and the Chicago Teachers Union on the school-to-prison pipeline. True to the documentary’s investigation, we can see the devastation wrought by the destructive policy. This film is relevant more than ten years later.
Her second film, Maria’s Story, Undocumented Violence, spotlighted an undocumented woman surviving an abusive marriage, gaining legal status, and achieving the American dream. Through a religious lens, we see the power structure that has subjugated women for centuries. This film has been used to educate Social Work students and the public at Governor State University. The Archdiocese of Chicago’s Domestic Violence Outreach program uses the film to inspire the undocumented community to get help.
She was fortunate to travel extensively before 2020. Her hobbies are reading theory, listening to music, and weightlifting.