As an entrepreneur, Maria believes in choosing the uncharted path. For over a decade, she has dedicated her career to creating meaningful change for families and children. As a three-time founder, she has built organizations and brands from the ground up with one mission: making life better for parents and kids.

Her most important role is mother of three. When it came time to find a school for her daughter, she was frustrated by the lack of innovation and the focus on averages she saw in the conventional school model. That frustration led her to join the founding team of The Village School, where she now serves as Head of School.

She leads with a founder's mindset, focused on sustainability, growth, and engagement. At TVS, though, Maria isn't following the usual playbook of scaling a good idea by standardizing it. Standardization reduces children to numbers to rank and sort and algorithms to optimize. Instead, she is building the school as a model: one that shows what's possible when every child is truly known, and that other educators can learn from, bring to their communities, and make their own.

Maria believes there has never been a more exciting time to be an entrepreneur in education. As technology reshapes how the world works, families are rethinking what school is for, and the door is open for models that put human connection at the center of learning.