About us
A mother and the daughter she raised.
Atelier Avela began with a question other parents kept asking us: how did you raise a child who succeeds, and still comes to you first?
Our story
We have lived across Asia and the Middle East for three decades. Maia grew up in demanding international schools, surrounded by families who wanted the very best for their children and often paid for it with closeness.
We took a different path. Firm standards and a warm home were never a trade-off for us. Maia went on to an Ivy League university, and she still brings everything to her mother first.
Parents noticed, and began asking how. Avela is our answer: the decisions a mother made, and what they felt like to the child who lived them.
Ara
Three decades living and working across Asia and the Middle East, including thirteen years in Thailand. Formally studied engineering, Asian Studies and meditation. An entrepreneur and investor who has built, lost and rebuilt. Ara homeschooled Maia for years, teaching through questions rather than answers, and has spent seven years studying Japanese and Taiwanese tea culture.
Maia
Grew up across Asia in competitive schools, then went on to an Ivy League university. She knows academic pressure and high standards from the inside, and stayed close to her mother through all of it. In our seminars she gives what no other adviser can: how a parent’s words are likely to land with the child.
The name
Avela: the sail and the candle.
In Portuguese, a vela means both the sail and the candle: direction, and light to see by. That is what we hope each parent leaves with.
We are not therapists, and we don’t take sides against anyone’s family. We offer perspective from people who have faced the same pressures, made the hard choices and kept the relationship close.