Maria Westfried

Biography

Connectress/Creator of Opportunities. Co-craft grounded strategies that create resources resulting in positive impact. I am driven to create opportunities for triple bottom line businesses and organizations. My joy is to effectively connect people and ideas while creating community.

I started my career in politics, passionate about helping women run for office at all levels of government and as a founding board member of Emerge, a leadership program for women that has expanded to 27 states. I served on four presidential campaigns, the Clinton Administration White House, US Department of Energy, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (US International Development Finance Corporation). I learned about nonprofit-business-government partnerships in Silicon Valley by working in the San Jose Mayor’s Office with successful housing, education and transportation initiatives. I spent several years exploring film including working on The Bucket List from script to screen.

As the daughter of a professor and librarian I am passionate about books and movies. I grew up in Connecticut enamored by childhood summers in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico which became a desire to utilize my experiences to create positive impact in Latin America. Since 2012 my home is Antigua, Guatemala with my Guatemalan husband focused on teambuilding, our elementary school aged son with Down syndrome, my mom, a coyote-mix from Mexico and our Guatemalan-UK dual citizen older children who navigate being bi-cultural in our increasingly interconnected world and share our passion to create positive social and environmental change.

Recent work includes Black Fox Philanthropy, Good Hotel Group: a ´profit-for-non-profit´ social business that reinvests profits with partner NGOs that focus on education and entrepreneurship, and Tierra & Lava: a conscious skincare company with Mayan wisdom, genuinely green principles and social impact.