Learning reimagined
Learning reimagined
I’m a Founder, Educator, Maker and storyteller That spends my days reimagining learning, education and parenting.
Here are some things I believe
kids are capable. They come to us brimming with curiosities, ideas, interests and big dreams.
Our primary job is to connect and listen. Our primary work in parenting and educating young people is first to deeply listen, attune to, and honor to all they bring. What are they like? What are their interests? What motivates them? What shuts them down? What makes their curiosity spark?
Our Secondary job is to coach and support. Kids come to us with their wildest ideas, dreams, what-ifs, and what-abouts. Our job is to take their bubbling curiosities and burgeoning capacities and support them in bringing their ideas to life.
The vast majority of education models are inverted. The vast majority of schooling has it wrong: centering curriculum instead of children. What if, instead of trying to shove content at children, we honored and centered kids and what they already come with, and supported them in bringing their dreams to life?
Kids know how to direct their learning. Ever watched a three year old at play? They move seamlessly through imaginative play, coming up with worlds and stories, building things, breaking them down, an endless fluid stream of creativity. They build off one another, take turns, have conflict, find a way to resolve it, and co-create whole other dimensions together. The vast majority of schooling interrupts this deep sacred work, and our job is to make space—for kids and adults alike—to reclaim their capacity to tap into this creative well where learning is most ripe and accessible.
Learners deserve better than to have their time wasted. While there are some skills (literacy, math, how to be a good human) that are necessary for kids, that list in most schools balloons way outside of the realm of reasonable. Moreover, the way those things are taught generally wastes kids’ time. Whether setting up a classroom, a school community, or building an educational product, what if we honored time as sacred, and centered not wasting kids’ time in the way they spend their days?
Let’s work together
Organizations
I support connection-based teams working to reimagine how we are in relationship to children: whether it be schools, birth centers, parenting communities, or tech companies building educational tools.
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I support mission-driven startups and nonprofits focused on connection-based parenting and education in crafting compelling narratives.
Startup support:
Shaping narratives that resonate with investors, customers, and early adopters
Translating complex products or services into clear, human-centered stories
Developing messaging for launches, pitch decks, and first commercialization
Nonprofit support:
Vision and mission articulation
Narrative alignment
Strategic narrative approaches to op-eds, speeches, thought-leadership pieces
Website copy strategy
Campaign messaging and content development
Annual reports and impact narratives
I also offer narrative coaching to help leaders tell their stories.
Like all of our services, my coaching model is steeped in empathy, deep listening, and collective care.
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I support mission-driven teams in developing strategies and operations rooted. in and impact. I support with:
-Strategic planning
-Recruitment and hiring
-Development efforts
-Operations
-Project-based work
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I advise companies building education and parenting tech products to make sure they build things that are actually useful and aligned with an educational and parenting ethos that centers and respects and honors children and childhood
Individual Coaching
parents, educators and school leaders working to reimagine how to be in relationship to children from a child-affirming, consent-based, non-coercive lens.
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Through 1:1 coaching, I hold a grounded, compassionate container to support educators, non-profit leaders and edtech and famtech executives in care-centered leadership.
I offer a multimodal approach centered in mindfulness, somatic experiencing, nonviolent communication, restorative justice, and a lens of equity and care.
Whether you’re stressed with the load, navigating team misalignment, facing conflict with your founder, or just needing a place to land and reflect, I’ve got you.
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When connection feels hard, or you’re looking to deepen your commitment to connection-based parenting and relationships.
Our society is designed in a way that is anathema to humanity’s natural instincts to connect. If you’re looking to deepen connection with your kids or partner, reimagine expansive ways to view family, or navigate conflict, separation, or divorce from a place of deep connection, I’m here to help.This coaching is for caregivers who want to:
Center connection instead of control.
Move through conflict with clarity and dignity.
Reimagine family structures beyond the nuclear model.
Together we’ll create practices that support your family’s flourishing and your own grounded presence.
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When you’re feeling stuck or ready to commit to your creative practice
Being blocked doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re tangled in systems that keep us silent and exhausted—capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism.This coaching is for anyone feeling creatively stuck who wants to:
Reconnect to their creative voice and imagination.
Move through creative blocks with relational, liberatory tools.
Root their practice in care and collective flourishing.
Move through career or life transitions from a place rooted in creative capacity and intuition.
Together we’ll build rhythms, quiet the inner critic, and reclaim creativity as an act of liberation.
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Let’s break through isolation and grow the muscles needed to weave community.
Building community is tender and messy work—but it doesn’t have to be lonely.
This coaching is for new or seasoned organizers, leaders, and community-builders who want to:
Map and nurture their ecosystem of belonging.
Develop practices that sustain collective accountability.
Navigate conflict in ways that deepen, rather than fracture, relationships.
Learn how to build robust, sustainable, healthy communities
Together we’ll design care-based strategies to build community that lasts.
Writing & Learning Community
I write and lead a learning community at Folkweaver, examining education, learning, and creative practice from a connetion-based lens. You can find my work published in Motherly Magazine, Mutha Magazine, and HTH Unboxed.
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I’m a narrative nonfiction writer and essayist exploring how reconnection — to ourselves, each other, and the planet — paves pathways to liberation.
I’m also working on a young adult fantasy novel and multiple nonfiction book projects, including an acrhival memoir called Hummingbirds and Other Magic.
I’m currently seeking aligned representation for both my YA and nonfiction projects.
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My story
Hi! I’m genuinely so glad you found your way here. My life’s work is to reimagine learning—both for kids and adults alike—from a connected, liberation-based, consent-based lens.
I’m a mother and educator, partner and friend, writer and maker, facilitator and community builder working to radically reimagine how we relate to one another and how we relate to the process of learning.
For the past decade, I’ve advised and coached cross-industry founders and executives in parenting and education, tech, and politics, including serving as Senior Advisor to Fenway Strategies—the speechwriting firm founded by President Obama’s former speechwriters—on issues of social justice and equity. A quiet tug at my core called me to align my liberation-based politics with my daily actions, and that’s the work you’re finding me in now.
I’ve spent two decades in deep thinking and practice about teaching and learning. I hold a Masters of Science in Teaching, earned my teaching chops as a 5th grade teacher at P.S 161 in West Harlem, and my organizational chops scaling orgnizations like Girls Who Code and Teach For All in their early days.
I earned my radical, connection-based parenting and education chops through a decade of mothering: I homebirthed my babies, co-founded a cooperative forest school called Wild Roots, trained as a homebirth doula, and serve on Brightworks School’s pedagogy committee.
I am, first and foremost, an insatiable learner—forever connecting dots across disciplines to weave together the world I want to live in. When I’m not deep in a creative flow, I’m likely reading, building/breaking something, writing, making sand angels or driftwood forts on the Northern California coast with my kids, building countercultural community spaces, or learning every design and making tool I can get my hands on.
I’m an Egyptian-American immigrant living on unceded Ohlone land (San Francisco) with my co-parent, two kids, and our ridiculously cute dog. As a BIPOC, neuroqueer, first-generation immigrant steeped in social justice, I practice and teach through a neuroaffirming, antiracist, inclusive, care-centered lens.
Care is my superpower
I’m a bleeding heart. I can’t help it. I feel the world and that is a blessing and a responsibility. I know this world of extraction, coersion, and domination is not the way. I care, and I respect your dignity and humanity, and I want us all to care and respect each other’s personhood. I am here alongside you working to shape the world we know is possible.
Nice things people say
“Sara has a rare and beautiful gift for guiding people to unearth their power—to speak truth to power and craft the authentic narratives that fuel bold, transformative movements. In a world that demands courageous leadership rooted in empathy and sustained by community, Sara meets the moment. She helps people lead from their most compassionate, grounded selves. Personally, she’s not only made me a better politician, but a better mom and a better human being.”
— Francesca Hong
Wi State Assembly Member
representing Downtown Madison
“I’ve worked with Sara on several extended projects that involved many highly invested stakeholders with differing perspectives and under circumstances that were initially fraught. Sara has a rare combination of deep EQ and sensitivity to interpersonal dynamics and a deep knowledge of techniques for actively building trust and alignment to enable groups that started off as lower trust to build deep rapport and work together effectively to make major decisions and to collaborate on a shared vision.
I’ve not worked with anyone with such a deep skill set in navigating complex group dynamics, and it felt like a super power throughout these projects having Sara in my corner to brainstorm, strategize, reflect, and plan how to unstick processes and move a group forward productively.
Sara is an expert at reading the room, authentic facilitation skills, honoring people and relationships in a work context, and all of the communications and emotional dynamics of work. She took several situations that seemed almost impossible to resolve and found a path forward that healed the group dynamics, built trust, and kept projects moving forward productively.
Sara is an amazing leadership coach, a thoughtful and skilled sounding board and guide, and has an excellent eye for thoughtful leadership and communications during a crisis. Anyone wanting to build trust, navigate a crisis situation, or develop as an authentic leader would be so lucky to have her in their corner.”
— Laura SKelton
Ex-Engineering Manager, Airbnb
Board member, Electra
“Sara has shown up in literal rain or shine to mirror, validate, and empathize with our triumphs and challenges. I have learned so much through Sara's modeling and deep insightful reflection. Sara’s ability to weave her skills and hold space for us to show up in true vulnerability has transformed my life.”
— Sara Van Acker
Co-Founder SF Birth Center
“Sara has a remarkable gift for crafting compelling narratives that bring an organization’s mission to life. Her words don’t just inform—they elicit connection, and create a vivid picture that draws the audience in and fosters genuine engagement.”
— Lisa Nowel
Founder of Recess
Director of Marketing at Brightworks
“Sara is a natural, heart focused, intuitive leader and the one to beautifully teach us how being in community is done.”
— Jen Madanat
San Francisco Midwife
“I can’t say enough good things about Sara - she is a revolutionary, magical person who brings so much of deep, transcendent value to the world”
— Noe Venable
Community Leader
Attuned Advising unapologetically and unequivocally stands in solidarity with Black liberation, LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive justice rights, Palestinian and indigenous justice, sovereignty & freedom, immigrant rights, disability justice, earth justice, and more broadly, with all historically oppressed beings in our collective quest for liberation.