Maria Barrera

Maria Barrera is the CEO and co-founder of Clayful, an on-demand chat-based mental health coaching platform that connects K-12 students with certified coaches in under 60 seconds. A Stanford-trained mechanical engineer who immigrated from Colombia at age 10, she moved from aerospace (Boeing, GE) into edtech (Nearpod) before a New York Times article about rising suicide rates in eight-year-olds pushed her to found Clayful in 2021. The company has raised $9.15M in total funding, serves 50+ school districts across six states in 133 languages, and frames mental health as coaching rather than therapy to reduce student stigma.