Summary
Maria McDowell is a rector, scholar, and web technologist blending 11+ years of leadership in parish ministry with deep expertise in building and managing nonprofit-focused web systems. With a PhD in Theological Ethics from Boston College, her academic work weaves Eastern Orthodox ethics, virtue ethics, and feminist liberation theology into practical ministry and anti-racist commitments at St. Philip the Deacon Episcopal Church in Portland. Concurrently she pioneers operational and support initiatives at Acquia, translating executive vision into scalable processes, tooling, and staffed programs. A longtime Drupal/PHP/MySQL practitioner and contract web developer, she builds maintainable, enterprise-quality sites for mission-driven organizations and has led distributed engineering teams through multi-cloud automation and scaling efforts. Known for combining scholarly rigor with hands-on technical problem solving, she brings unusually deep interdisciplinary fluency—able to move from theological research to project implementation and web delivery. Her parallel careers in academia, parish leadership, and technology make her adept at convening diverse stakeholders to turn complex values into concrete, sustainable systems.
11 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
MDiv, MDiv at Fuller Theological Seminary
BA, Religion, BA, Religion at Pitzer College
Phd, Theological Ethics, Phd, Theological Ethics at Boston College