Faculty & Staff

Carol Zurita

Enrollment Specialis

I grew up in Ecuador, in a house that always smelled faintly of marker ink and fresh paper, my mom's school was practically an extension of our home. She's an AMI (Association Montessori International) certified teacher who founded and ran the school herself, watching it grows over the years to include elementary and secondary levels. I remember the particular hush of a Montessori classroom: the soft click of wooden materials being placed just so, sunlight on low shelves, everything within a child's reach. As a teen, I enrolled as a student myself. What I loved most was the steady rotation of AMI-certified teachers my mom welcomed from abroad — new voices, new accents, new ways of seeing the world, all passing through our small corner of Ecuador. Looking back, that's where the itch to travel first took hold of me.

In my early 20s, fresh out of college, I gave in to that itch. What started as one trip unfolded into two decades of movement: Chile, Denver, South Africa, Korea, China, Malaysia, Singapore, and finally Seattle, each place leaving its own residue on me: a phrase, a spice, a way of greeting someone. In China, where I lived from 2011 to 2018, I taught English and led cultural exchange programs in a couple of kindergartens, kneeling on tiny chairs and watching small hands sort Montessori materials the same way I once did, half a world and half a lifetime away from my mother's classroom.

In 2025, I completed my MBA at Macquarie University from Sydney, Australia — though the journey there was its own kind of patchwork: I began the program in the humid warmth of Singapore, carried it through a pandemic on my laptop screen, and finally closed the last chapter after settling into the grey-green calm of Seattle. My focus was business development and expansion, always through the lens of community growth because for me, business has never felt separate from people.

Today, I bring together the two threads that have shaped my whole life: a love of learning through cultural diversity, and a deep pull toward helping communities thrive through genuine, attentive service. That's what drew me to BMS, where I get to walk alongside current parents, new parents, and the wider community, making sure every touchpoint with the school feels warm, human, and cared for.



Outside of work, you'll usually find me with a book in hand or a pen moving across a page — I've written and published four books so far. I love striking up conversations with strangers, collecting little pieces of their stories the way I once collected stamps in a passport. And most evenings, I take long walks, letting my mind wander wherever it wants to go.