Mariana Santa Maria was born in Mexico City and migrated to the US in 2001. She worked at Maur Hill-Mount Academy as coordinator of the English as a Second Language Total Inmersion international program. In 2006 she moved to Omaha, Nebraska where she started a career at Boys Town. Initially, she worked as a Family Teacher overseeing the day-to-day of a group of 8 youth in a family-style program. In 2010 she moved into In-Home Family Services providing intensive, in-home crisis intervention services to families in the metro area. In 2014 she began her role as Parent Training Supervisor responsible for coordinating, implementing, and evaluating the largest parenting program at Boys Town. In 2018 due to Mariana’s expertise, she was called to serve as a Staff Evaluation Coordinator to join a selective group to support the certification process for all Boys Town certified positions. Mariana is currently a Program Quality Manager where she consults with other Boys Town sites nationwide to implement their programs with the highest levels of quality.
Mariana has also worked alongside the Boys Town Child and Family Translational Research Center on projects to evaluate the effectiveness of Common Sense Parenting, a parent training program, in Spanish. She has also written articles about parenting for the Omaha World-Herald and is a former Board Member for the Nebraska Association of Translators and Interpreters (NATI).
Mariana has a bachelor’s degree from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, she has a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Benedictine College in Kansas, and a Master’s degree in Organizational Leadership from the College of Saint Mary in Nebraska. She is the proud mother of two young men and enjoys the outdoors, nice conversations, and a passion for reading.