Headshot of Maria Tan standing by a tree with long wispy leaves around her. She is holding traditional Filipino fighting arts sticks.

About Our Founder

Maria Tan is a first-generation Filipino-American educator, consultant, and founder of House of Thriving. She partners with thought leaders, organizations, and schools committed to healing-centered leadership, relational growth, and transformative education. Maria began her journey as a Bronx high school science teacher, where she helped lead a school-wide shift toward equitable and restorative practices—introducing trauma-informed mindfulness, facilitating racial affinity groups among staff, and integrating restorative circles into daily school life. Her direct experience of healing from teacher burnout inspired her to launch the Thriving Teacher Project in 2020, a collective effort to create healing and restorative spaces for educators during the height of the pandemic.

Through House of Thriving, Maria now works with visionary leaders across education, the arts, and community organizations to nurture purpose-driven work rooted in relational care, healing, and emergent growth. Her experience spans strategic leadership advising, course and event design, podcast production, and curriculum and program evaluation—all guided by an ethos of mindfulness, equity, and sustainable impact. A longtime practitioner of mindfulness and Tibetan Buddhism, Maria brings a decolonial, somatic, and relational approach to all her work. As a passion project, she also collaborates with her two older brothers to create workshops and guided meditations centered on intergenerational healing and cultural restoration.

The Wounded Healers Portrait and Podcast Series

This portrait and podcast series by the Acosta Institute captures the profiles of nine educators, community leaders and practitioners, all of whom have dedicated their lives to — in some shape or form — creating spaces for others to thrive, flourish and heal.

Featuring Our Founder

July 2025: The Healing-Centered Futures Summit

The Healing-Centered Futures Summit is a 3-day gathering for educators, entrepreneurs, technologists, and changemakers who believe that healing, justice, and imagination should shape the future of our systems.