Amanda Petersen is the Executive Director of FocusedKids and is the facilitator of their highly rated professional development series for teachers and parent coaching series. She is also the lead classroom trainer for the FocusedKids team. Before working for FocusedKids in 2018, Amanda taught preschool, kindergarten, and first grade in the Roaring Fork Valley on the western slope of Colorado. Amanda holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Master’s of Arts Degree in Clinical Mental Health. When not attending to the duties of FocusedKids, Amanda also offers grief and loss counseling to children, adolescents, and adults.Additionally, Amanda has a private practice offering counseling services in the Roaring Fork Valley. She shares her personal life with her husband of 16 years and two children, ages 16 and 12. She spends her free time running in the mountains and practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation.

I was born and raised in Peru, and I moved to the United States in 2009. Since the first minute I arrived in the Roaring Fork Valley, I knew this place was my home and have lived here ever since. I believe education is the engine that gives people the power to grow and enrich their lives as human beings. In 2014, I obtained my Associate’s Degree in Arts with emphasis in Psychology from Colorado Mountain College. While pursuing my degree, I had the opportunity to work with first generation college Latino students who were facing difficulties adapting to the demands of post-secondary studies. This experience gave me a glimpse into the socio-economic barriers that the Latino community encounters daily in this Valley.

Since an early age, helping the most vulnerable has been my passion. In 2017, my dream came true when the Family Resource Center hired me to work as Family Liaison for Basalt Elementary School. Since then, my role has been to liaise families with community resources to help their children succeed academically. Our goal is to reduce or remove any socio-economic barrier that prevents children from focusing on their education. In that endeavor, the Family Resource Center is continually training its staff to serve our families in a better capacity. One of the trainings we received was the FocusedKids curriculum, which we share with the families we are working with. Ever since, I’ve been captivated by how fun, easy, and effective the FocusedKids content is to teach. During the last several years, in coordination with the FocusedKids team and Family Resource Center, I’ve had the opportunity to share the FocusedKids curriculum with parents of students in the Roaring Fork School District. During these parent classes, I became devoted to this program because I have witnessed its effectiveness firsthand.

While working at the Family Resource Center, I noticed the huge need for professionals to help the Latino community in the social-emotional area, and felt that I needed to do something about it. As a result, I enrolled in the Social Work Program at Metropolitan State University and continue to work with this population in a professional capacity.

Shannon Campbell has had the joy and privilege of working with young children and families for over 40 years. She has worked in a variety of settings as a kindergarten and preschool teacher and director, a special educator and a family/teacher trainer and coach. Over her career as an educator she has seen the importance of self regulation and self awareness in order to learn and grow. Empowering children, teachers and families in awareness and control of their own emotions and behavior has become a cornerstone of her work.

“FocusedKids has given me the tools to support children, families and students in the most important and fundamental way. It makes learning about our brain and self regulation meaningful and fun! It really has changed my teaching, how I educate, and my interactions with children, families and staff. I am thrilled to be part of the FocusedKids team to share this wonderful, vital information with families, teachers and children!”

Kathy has lived in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley for 45 years, where she raised her only son. Her professional life has been diverse, but always with an eye on children. Working in the ’70s at a family crisis center, owning and operating the Short Short toy stores in Aspen, Snowmass, and at the Broadmoor Hotel in the ’80s, founding the Aspen Education Foundation in the early ’90s, she has always loved working with kids, or on their behalf.

In the mid-’90s, she returned to graduate school at the University of Colorado-Denver, and completed a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology, focusing on children and families. Since then, she has had a private practice locally and has worked privately and within the local public schools and programs providing special groups for struggling kids. In 1999, and for ten years, she was hired by the University of Colorado-Denver as an adjunct professor to teach child and family counseling courses in the Master’s level program.

In 2010-12, she was involved with Goldie Hawn’s program, MindUP, as a volunteer program developer, trainer, and interim Director for the U.S. program. In 2013, she decided to re-focus her attention on the Roaring Fork Valley and developed a program called FocusedKids™ to teach preschoolers basic executive function skills. She piloted FocusedKids in the Valley Settlement Project’s mobile preschool, El Busesito, serving a low-income immigrant population. With success there, FocusedKids™ has now expanded to include grades k-5 in elementary schools from Aspen to Rifle, Colorado, and Arizona. Teachers and parents participate so that the skills learned can be reinforced at home and in the classroom. Using puppets and simple calming and focusing lessons, kids learn about their brains and how to self-regulate and focus their attention. The goal is to positively affect early brain architecture by teaching age-appropriate skills that support healthy life outcomes.

She recently transitioned from the position of Executive Director and now serves on the board of FocusedKids.

She is happily married, has a wonderful son, daughter-in-law, two granddaughters, and a wonderful labrador retriever, and loves to hike, bike, kayak, and read.