Helping children thrive in and out of school.
Project Oak partners with schools, districts, and families to provide them and their children the emotional intelligence skills they need to thrive.
We partner with teachers, school leaders, and families to strengthen children’s sense of self, equip them with lifelong emotional skills, and create safe spaces where they can grow, feel supported, and show up as their authentic selves.
Second graders sharing their emotions.
We empower children to live joyful, resilient, and fulfilling lives through emotional education.
Creating a Mindful Society
Children need emotional intelligence and personal agency to thrive in a changing world. When young people learn to recognize and manage their emotions, they build resilience, empathy, and sound decision-making skills. As their sense of agency grows, they gain the confidence to act on their values, navigate uncertainty, and contribute meaningfully to their communities—laying the foundation for a more compassionate and enlightened society.
Teaching Children Emotional Intelligence
We provide our children with a complete education for navigating their emotions and building powerful personal agency.
Supporting Parent + Teacher Magic
We give parents and teachers the tools, understandings, and space to live in their zone of genius — instead of constantly managing behavior and conflict.
Bridging Vibrant School Climates + Home Spaces
We co-create and bridge vibrant home and school spaces with common language, tools, and understandings.
Meet Our Team
A team dedicated to creating a new status quo for how children relate with themselves, and how our communities relate with each other.
Marcello LaGreca
Marcello is the founder of The Seedling Project and Project Oak, initiatives dedicated to equipping local communities with the emotional intelligence education needed to live resilient, connected, and fulfilling lives. Marcello’s approach integrates academic study, professional coaching, and years of applied emotional skills practice, shaping programs that are both developmentally appropriate and grounded in real-world experience. He studied Psychology at Southern Connecticut State University and holds a Professional Coaching Certification from the International Coaching Federation’s Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC).
Founder & President, Board of Directors
Margaret Fitter
Maggie works in advertising and marketing at Yale New Haven Health, where she translates healthcare programs and services into meaningful campaigns, events, and educational initiatives that serve patients and the broader community. She holds a Master of Science in Sports Management from West Texas A&M University and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from Keene State College, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the New Haven Road Race.
Secretary, Board of Directors
Treasurer, Board of DirectorsBrianna Gavigan
Brianna is a community development finance leader working at the intersection of capital, community, and well-being. She serves as Senior Vice President of Resource Development at TruFund Financial Services, a nonprofit financial institution dedicated to directing capital into communities historically excluded from traditional finance. Brianna holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Mary Washington and a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Connecticut, grounding her work in both systems-level thinking and human-centered impact.
Our Core Values:
At the heart of Project Oak’s mission and daily work are our Core Values—the living foundation upon which we make decisions, cultivate our community, and design and deliver every program. These values serve as our compass.
1. Child First Focus
We make every decision with our children as our number one and most important focus. We make our decisions based upon what will support the highest level of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well being of the child.
2. Compassionate Authenticity
We show up authentically and compassionately among each other, with our partners, and throughout our programming for the sake of promoting an environment where all are welcome as their True Selves, invited to share their unique gifts, and embraced with love, understanding, and respect. Truth and compassion shape every action of Project Oak.
3. Balanced Innovation
We balance advancing technologies with timeless, ancient knowledge providing an innovation that is balanced, diverse, and rooted — for the benefit of our children, communities, organization, and partners.
4. Playfulness
We express ourselves in a professionally playful spirit, cultivating an environment of creativity, connection, deep learning, and childlike curiosity that allows us to provide an innovative, friendly, and heart warming organization, and programming, for all who we encounter.
5. Loving Transparency
We operate with full transparency throughout the organization, cultivating an environment of powerful organizational development, personal growth within the culture, and programming that is fed by the hearts of all instead of the minds of few.
6. Rooted Wisdom
We operate with the knowledge that unification among all creates the strongest organizational mindset, the most wisdom-rich programming, and the most sustainable path for centuries’ worth of impact. We blend the ancient wisdom of eastern philosophy with the evolving psychology of western modernity.
7. Perfect Righteousness
We know that at the core of each person is a perfectly loving, honest, compassionate, peaceful, and powerful being. Through our values, relationships, and mission we aim to nurture the blossoming of perfect righteousness for the collective consciousness. Together, we are creating a world of natural justice, of perfect righteousness.
Adopted by the Board of Directors on October 16, 2025.