Ana María García Blanco is a Puerto Rican educator who pioneered Montessori public education on the Island. She is currently Executive Director of Instituto Nueva Escuela, a nonprofit organization, devoted to the social and educational transformation of the public education system through the Montessori method.

As an educator with her bachelors, masters and doctoral degree from Harvard University, she has always believed education is the key for social change and progress. She founded the first public Montessori school in Puerto Rico, La Nueva Escuela Juan Ponce de León, where she was the principal for 23 years increasing student achievement, reducing school desertion, eradicating school violence and engaging families in the social academic project of the school. In 2000, schools began to turn to Ana Maria for support building public Montessori programs to serve their children which led to the founding of the Instituto Nueva Escuela. Dr. Garcia has been the Instituto Nueva Escuela Executive Director since 2009— now serving 46 public schools around the Island. 

She has lectured across the country, taught at the Sacred Heart University, the University of Puerto Rico, Inter American University, and was a teaching fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has also authored several publications, chapters and articles on education, including ‘‘A Community-Based Approach to Education Reform in Puerto Rico’’, which appeared in Edwin Meléndez’s Colonial Dilemma, Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Puerto Rico, and coauthored ‘‘Entitlements of Latino Students and Parents in the Massachusetts Public Educational System: Some Legal and Policy Considerations’’, for the University of Massachusetts.