Owner / Head of School of City Kids LA.  I began my career in Chicago working with homeless families.  It was during this time I became really interested in our education system and how it was supporting all our children.  Education is the key for our children to connect their passions with a purpose.  We are natural born scientists. Children want to know things.  They want the opportunity to explore and discover.  They want to be challenged and in the best learning environments they often surprise us with what they can accomplish.

In the next few years, I had moved to Los Angeles and spent time working with both children who were homeless, in the foster care system, and in private school settings.  As a teacher I spent time dreaming about a school that would allow me to provide our children with an environment that catered to each of them.  I worked with kids in Preschool to High School as a teacher and curriculum developer.  In early childhood, kids would come to me eager to learn but by High School most couldn’t wait to escape school.  I often questioned what we were doing.  These kids were spending so much time memorizing information to ace a test but were not able to apply this knowledge.  I studied other school models nationally and internationally.  Charged with research that would better our education  system, I spent time working in administration and policy.  The results were slow and I wondered where my own daughters were going to attend school.  I needed something better today-- not in 20 years.  I wanted my kids to attend a Language Immersion school that focused on the arts as much as it did language acquisition.  I wanted my kids to learn biology by working with scientists in nature.  I wanted them to become global citizens.  I wanted them to be socially and emotionally intelligent.  I wanted them to find meaning in their work and education.  I wanted a lot!  It was then that my partner and I created a plan to open City Kids School.