Maris Mendes

Following the completion of her bachelor’s degree in English Education from California State University Long Beach, Maris Mendes spent six years at the Starbucks Coffee Company, where she was tasked with turning around a succession of underperforming stores from the perspective of efficiency, culture, and profitability.

In 2013, Mendes joined LePort Schools, where she was rapidly promoted, over a three-year period, from Campus Manager to Operations Manager to Director of Talent Management. Mendes developed a full range of expertise in leading a network of schools, from the nitty-gritty of school operations, to management of both campus and corporate teams, to high-level strategic work, particularly in the area of creating rapidly scalable Human Resources systems.

Her combination of ground-up operational experience and strategic judgment is now at work at Higher Ground, where Mendes oversees and coordinates all aspects of the school business, from opening, hiring and initializing systems to marketing and managing new campuses and maintaining the growth of existing ones.