Maria Barrera read an article in the New York Times about rising suicide rates among eight-year-olds and found her life path permanently altered. This Stanford-educated mechanical engineer caught the wave of new tech sweeping through education and began developing a system in which every child has access to the wellness support they need when they need it.

Today, as CEO of Clayful Health, Barrerra has rolled out a school-based  online coaching and support system that removes barriers that keep students from asking for help and can connect them with the support they need as little as 60 seconds, even after-hours away from school. It's a revolutionary concept in a challenging post-pandemic world where for every 1,200 students there is only school psychologist and waitlists for support can be as long as four to six months. Barrera hopes to provide schools across the country with a new tool to support their students while taking the increasing load off of educators who can often find themselves spending more time reacting to student behaviors and wellness issues than they are actually teaching.

Find out more about Maria and Clayful Health at clayfulhealth.com.

"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.

Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.