Carrie Gervais.

Carrie Gervais co-founded Stepping Stones Montessori School, a Chelsea, Maine-based independent Montessori education institution serving families across central Maine.

Alongside co-founder Jennifer Cousins, she has built Stepping Stones into a recognized regional alternative education provider offering Montessori-method early childhood and elementary programs. They were jointly named the 2025 SBA Maine Small Business Person of the Year. Private alternative education providers fill specific gaps in public education systems, particularly in rural and smaller metropolitan areas where families seek pedagogical alternatives that are not otherwise available locally. Gervais's trajectory as a woman-founded, mission-driven education entrepreneur in a rural New England market reflects a pattern of American small-business entrepreneurship that is easy to underestimate: building durable institutions around specific educational philosophies, serving families who have made conscious choices about their children's learning environments. Small independent schools are some of the longest-lived small businesses in the country - institutions that compound over decades in ways that most consumer businesses cannot.