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Meet Mónica
Mónica Ruiz is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Elevare Group LLC. Based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she is an executive leadership coach and former Head of School who supports women leaders and mission driven institutions through complex transitions with clarity, strategy, and humanity.
Where Clarity Meets Courage
If you ask Mónica Ruiz what success looks like, she does not begin with titles or milestones. She begins at home. She begins with her daughters. She speaks about alignment. She speaks about a life where work and identity are not in competition with one another but in conversation.
Her leadership philosophy is simple and quietly radical. She explains:
“Clarity is kindness. Clear expectations, honest communication, and thoughtful boundaries create the conditions for trust and excellence especially in leadership.”
It is a belief that has shaped her decisions, her reinventions, and the way she now guides other women into positions of power without asking them to abandon themselves in the process.
Teaching, Motherhood, and the Early Architecture of Leadership
Mónica’s professional life began in 1996 as a Spanish teacher in inner-city public schools, first in Maryland, then in Atlanta. She entered classrooms filled with students navigating layered identities and limited resources. At the same time, she pursued her master’s degree while teaching full-time, holding both practice and scholarship together from the start.
Her early career was not linear. It was immersive. While completing her PhD at the University of Georgia, she became a mother. Far from extended family support, she learned quickly that resilience was not simply an individual trait. It required structure. It required community.
When she realized that no space existed for bilingual graduate student mothers like herself, she built one. What began as an online group called Bilingual Moms of Athens evolved into a weekly in-person gathering where women shared childcare, emotional support, and practical wisdom. At the time, she did not label it leadership. Looking back, it was a defining moment. She was creating infrastructure rooted in care.
Motherhood and scholarship were not competing identities. They were intertwined. She learned to design systems that allowed ambition and tenderness to coexist. That early experience would later shape how she leads institutions and coaches women who are navigating similar tensions between responsibility and aspiration.
A Sixteen-Year Chapter That Was Meant to Be Three
What Mónica once imagined as a brief departure from academia turned into a sixteen-year chapter in Friends education and boarding schools. She entered with curiosity and stayed with intention. Over time, she stepped into nearly every aspect of school leadership and operations.
Those years taught her how mission-driven communities thrive. She observed that values alone are not enough. Systems must reflect those values. Culture must be intentionally cultivated. Leadership must be practiced with coherence.
Her path eventually led her into senior leadership as an Assistant Head of School in Maryland. Later, she was invited to return home to Puerto Rico after nearly three decades in the mainland United States to lead an all-girls school. The invitation was more than professional. It was personal. Returning home meant proximity to family. It meant cultural reconnection. It meant risk. On paper, the move did not appear strategic. In her heart, it felt aligned.
After two years leading the school, and twenty-nine years in schools overall, she transitioned into school-adjacent work with College Board Latin America while expanding the coaching and consulting practice she had quietly maintained since 2000. Elevare Group was no longer a side endeavor. It became her central platform.
Divorce, Discernment, and Redefining Strength
One of the most shaping challenges of Mónica’s life unfolded while she was holding significant professional responsibility. An unexpected divorce arrived during a season when she was leading at a high level and parenting three daughters.
The experience confronted her assumptions about independence and endurance. She could have rushed into the next opportunity. Instead, she chose to remain grounded where she was. She allowed her community to sustain her family. She practiced discernment over urgency.
She recalls the lesson with reflection:
“The challenge didn’t break me, it refined me. It taught me that leadership is not about enduring at all costs, but about choosing alignment, courage, and possibility, again and again.”
That season reshaped her understanding of strength. She learned to receive support rather than perform self-sufficiency. She modeled for her daughters a version of resilience that was collective rather than solitary.
From Educator to Executive Voice
Today, through Elevare Group, Mónica works with mid-career women leaders who are standing at a threshold. Many of them have deep expertise. They have credibility. They have experience. Yet they sense that the way they have been speaking and leading no longer matches the level of responsibility they are ready to hold.
She names this transition clearly. Many women, especially those who have built their careers in education or mission-driven spaces, continue to operate from what she calls an educator’s voice long after they have stepped into executive roles. They remain collaborative and service-oriented, but often at the expense of authority, visibility, and strategic positioning.
Her work is to help them shift without losing themselves. She supports women in strengthening executive presence, claiming their voice, and making decisions with clarity. She helps them align ambition with integrity. She challenges inherited narratives that equate leadership with self-sacrifice.
Her clients are often Latinas and women who did not grow up surrounded by visible models of professional power. Representation matters to her because she understands firsthand how transformative it is to see what is possible. Her work expands that field of vision.
At the institutional level, she partners with schools and organizations to align values with systems. She examines how leadership is practiced, not only what outcomes are achieved. She believes excellence should not require burnout or self-erasure. The through line is alignment: personal and professional, strategy and humanity, ambition and sustainability.
Success in Conversation, Not Competition
For Mónica, success begins with her daughters growing into grounded and courageous women. Professionally, it means loving what she does while remaining rooted in her values. It means having the courage to decline opportunities that look impressive but feel misaligned.
She measures impact not only in promotions or revenue but in transformation. When a woman moves from self-doubt into clarity. When a leadership team practices integrity in its systems. When a client chooses sustainability over performance at all costs.
Her guiding principle remains steady. Clear expectations create trust. Honest communication strengthens culture. Thoughtful boundaries protect both people and mission.
Building Elevare at Fifty
Recently turning fifty, Mónica sees this chapter as expansive. Not in scale alone, but in depth and impact. She is committed to growing Elevare Group thoughtfully, expanding its offerings while protecting its integrity.
She continues to engage in school-adjacent work that aligns with her commitment to education, leadership, and equity. She remains open to new entrepreneurial possibilities, including ventures that may involve her family. Reinvention, for her, is not a break from the past. It is an evolution rooted in experience.
She speaks often to younger women about seasons. You can have it all, she says, just not all at once. Growth unfolds in rhythm. Patience is as necessary as ambition. At fifty, she does not feel the need to prove. She feels the responsibility to build. To expand access. To mentor generously. To create spaces where women do not have to choose between power and authenticity.
Leadership as Service and Alignment
When asked what ultimately defines her leadership, Mónica does not list roles. She names service. She names integrity. She names the courage to choose alignment repeatedly.
Her earliest models were her abuelas, Angela and Maria, women of strength and resourcefulness who carried families through hardship with fierce love. Public figures like Sonia Sotomayor and Antonia Coello Novello expand that lineage in the civic sphere. Together, these examples shaped her understanding that leadership is rooted in resilience and heart.
The arc of her life does not follow a straight line. It curves through classrooms, community circles, board meetings, heartbreak, homecoming, and renewal. It carries the imprint of faith in the quiet assurance that the path reveals itself in time. Mónica Ruiz does not lead from urgency. She leads from alignment. And in doing so, she is widening the doorway for other women to step fully into their own voice, power, and possibility.
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