Mom of three young children and Harvard Law School graduate, Gloria Chan is a tenacious and impassioned education leader. She dreams of wildly innovative, integrated, and engaging K-12 education that empowers young people to walk their paths of purpose with a sense of wholeness.

Her mission is to provide a strong foundation for children in these early impressionable years — a foundation made of the elixir of a sense of belonging within a nurturing community, personal integrity, and unwavering curiosity. 

Through this holistic model, a love of learning is imprinted through experience, for life.

As a daughter of working-class immigrants, Gloria has known a life of sustained high stress, high pressure, and high achievement over decades. Gloria followed a legal path to be a Harvard-trained lawyer so she could make a difference for minority communities. She spent seven years in national, Asian American politics and advocacy, representing the voices of under-resourced communities in the federal policymaking arena. She served as CEO of a national nonprofit, spearheading multi-million dollar fundraising efforts, and hosting presidential events with U.S. President Barack Obama at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies.

In trying to squeeze into these predetermined, high-achieving, elite career molds in national politics, her social, creative, artistic, and entrepreneurial sides — and her spirit — were left thirsty, craving, and dying for more. To make a serious personal course correction in her 30s, Gloria became a professional coach for the next seven years and helped high-achieving, overworked, and burned-out clients — mostly women of color — become impactful leaders by midwifing them through painful experiences, finding their purpose and passion, and tending to delicate self-care. 

Empowerment Coaching

After her nonprofit leadership, Gloria became CEO of her own leadership coaching firm.  With a client list of highly-visible nonprofit executives, organizations, and change agents—including senior White House staff, senior U.S. congressional staff, the Congressional Black Caucus Institute and the Asian American Journalists Association—Gloria partnered with women of color and social visionaries to skyrocket leadership impact through her certified coaching expertise. A sought-after public speaker and diversity coaching expert, Gloria has delivered presentations on combatting stereotypes, leadership development, career fulfillment, negotiation, and women’s empowerment.

The majority of Gloria’s 1000+ hours of coaching highly visible leaders were spent helping leaders UNLEARN what is taught in traditional schooling, including the mindsets, emotional landscape, and personal habits that consistently led to burnout, workaholism, and a life of unmet needs and unending demands.

When she thought about sending her children through traditional models of education, she cringed — not wanting her children to be conditioned for decades only to find themselves desperate to unlearn everything in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond. 

Educational Institution Building

In addition to individual coaching, Gloria spent five years of her coaching career building a coaching school. Gloria served as the Senior Vice President of CoachDiversity Institute, a first-and-only-of-its-kind coaching institute whose mission is to empower diverse communities through coaching. In this role, Gloria supported the Institute to formulate its vision and mission, develop programmatic strategies, draft, test, and refine educational training curricula for diverse coaches.

Gloria was deeply involved in the creation, development, and delivery of training and certification curricula for new coaches and organizational clients; as well as the training and recruitment of team members. During the Institute’s first five start-up years, Gloria helped rapidly build a multi-million dollar business that is sustained and thriving to this day. Gloria brings this educational institution-building expertise as she leads Springwell’s growth to ensure the sustainability of a legacy school.

Educational Background

Gloria’s education and professional development achievements speak volumes of her conviction for continuous learning and development. 

• Gloria held a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential through the International Coach Foundation (ICF) during her coaching years.

• She studied North Indian Kathak dance for five years, modern dance for five years, and traditional Chinese dance for 13 years.

• She attained a yoga teacher certification.

• She took continuing education visual art watercolor classes.

• She took early childhood education courses at Montgomery College.

Gloria is a Harvard Law School graduate and has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Swarthmore Colege, with a focus on political theory.

This same love of learning is infused throughout the culture of Springwell.

Early Impressionable Years Lead to a Strong Foundation

Through these impressional years of education at the Springwell School, students will learn to be the leaders of their own lives, the leaders of our local and global communities, creating nurturing spaces where change may occur. These are not only keys to living a meaningful life, but also keys to moving humanity forward as we face the complex challenges of our time. 

Gloria’s winding professional journey has inspired the birth of Springwell in 2020. At Springwell, Gloria and her dedicated and passionate team help students: 

• feel an unwavering sense of self-worth (and the worth of everyone in the community) 

• develop their voice and confidence

• follow their own intuition and calling 

• understand their own emotional landscape 

• build resilience to do things that are appropriately challenging

• ease up on themselves for sustainability during their learning journey of becoming human 

• develop deep empathy through communication, negotiation, and listening skills;

• to be courageous in collaborative problem-solving; and

• be a positively contributing member of an open and inspired community of lifelong learners
  

Doesn’t that sound like an ideal world and workplace and way of being for grownups in the coming decades and century to come?