Michele Maas, LPCC-S
As a licensed professional clinical counselor and founder of Maas Mental Health and Wellness, Michele has spent her career helping others navigate life’s most difficult moments.
She never expected one of those moments would redefine her own.
In November 2020, Michele’s husband, Jonathan, was hospitalized with COVID-19. Just days later, she received a call no one is ever prepared for. “Jonathan is struggling.” A nurse held up the phone so he could say goodbye.
Over the course of 80 days, Jonathan fought for his life. He spent 47 of those days on a ventilator, with less than a 3% chance of survival. Michele remained on the outside, navigating the unbearable reality of losing someone she couldn’t reach.
So she focused on what she knew best.
She built relationships.
She learned the names of the nurses caring for him. She asked about their families, their lives. If she couldn’t be there physically, she would be present in every other way possible.
“They became my family,” Michele says.
At the same time, she was still working by supporting clients through telehealth, many of whom were frontline workers themselves. She was living in two worlds at once: caregiver and clinician, holding space for others while quietly carrying her own uncertainty.
In the midst of fear and loss, she began sending small notes of gratitude to the hospital staff.
“It gave me something I could control when everything felt out of control.”
Then, against all odds, Jonathan survived.
Not merely survived, but he experienced what doctors could only describe as a miracle. After preparing for a double lung transplant, his lungs healed completely.
With deep gratitude and a renewed sense of purpose, Michele and her husband made a decision: they would turn their experience into something that could support others in meaningful, lasting ways.
They founded Another Act of Kindness, a nonprofit that aims to care for those who have made it their life’s work to care for everyone else.
Today, the seed of compassion that started with Michele just trying to find some control among the chaos has grown into programs that both support and educate those on the front lines of care.
Another Act of Kindness awards nursing scholarships to address workforce shortages and open doors for individuals entering the field. The program Code Lavender provides gift cards, comfort items, and more for family members of ICU patients as well as hospital staff.
And through her signature initiative, Healing the Healers, Michele equips healthcare professionals with a full-day wellness and education retreat. Healing the Healers brings nurses, respiratory therapists, and frontline workers together for restoration and learning. Participants earn continuing education credits while engaging in sessions on burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and sustainable self-care practices.
Michele doesn’t just teach about care. She models it.
“We see you. We hear you. We affirm you,” she tells every group.
And then she takes it further.
Because for Michele, empathy is only the beginning.
“Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes,” she explains. “Compassion is asking, ‘What can I do to alleviate your suffering?’”
That subtle difference has shaped not only her programs, but her approach to leadership, mentorship, and community.
Her work has already reached hundreds of healthcare professionals, been published in a nursing journal, and is now expanding into university classrooms, ensuring that future nurses enter the field not just clinically prepared, but emotionally equipped.
Education, for Michele, isn’t just about information; it’s about giving people the tools, the language, and the support they need to continue showing up for their patients, their families, and themselves.
That perspective is rooted in a lifetime of influence.
Raised by parents who modeled compassion in everyday action, Michele learned early on the value of meeting people where they are. Her father would stop to help strangers on the side of the road. Her mother taught her to listen without judgment.
Her path was not linear. Michele began her career in retail before realizing she was meant for something different. While pregnant with her daughter, she made the decision to return to school, eventually earning her master’s degree and building a decades-long career in mental health.
Her advice to other women reflects her parents’ influence on her:
“Communicate, listen, have empathy. Those things build relationships. We need that connection.”
Michele shows what happens when connection turns into action.
It creates impact.
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