Claudia wears many hats—educational consultant, parent coach, mother, curriculum designer, producer, editor, writer, meta-learning mentor. She focuses on projects that significantly improve education and the lives of young people. She is dedicated to co-creating learning futures that place a high value on well-being, happiness, compassion, self-direction, social and emotional learning, and systems thinking.
Past project include: co-editor on the 21st Century Notebooking project, a series of 4 books for teachers and students on papercraft and electronics, on the team that launched SENG Connect, offering online SEL (social emotional learning) support for gifted young adults. She designed an open source curriculum on Citizen Science and Air Quality Monitoring for Manylabs. She was an editor on the team that created the first K-12 fully digital curriculum in English Language Arts, and she developed and launched a “community-sourced” online teacher professional development environment for the Monterey Institute of Technology & Education (MITE).
From 2006–2010, Claudia directed Education Programs at Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, an early 3D Virtual World. At Linden Lab, Claudia advised universities, colleges, large urban school systems, small rural schools and international Ministries of Education on best practices for learning and teaching on the 3D Internet. Before joining Linden Lab, Claudia founded her own eLearning consulting company, providing leadership on pioneering internet projects in the U.S., Brazil, Fiji, Europe, and the Middle East (1997-2005).
With Dan Mapes, she co-founded three experimental medialabs in Santa Cruz and San Francisco between 1986 and 1996. Projects included work with UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre; real-time video performances with jazz greats Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Ornette Coleman; SynergyLabs provided the technological expertise for early Internet video conferencing experiments such as the First Summit in Cyberspace (participants were Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel, former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter) in 1995.
Inspired by the work of John Holt, Ivan Illich, and Paolo Freire, Claudia was an early adopter of “growing without schooling.” She co-founded Journey (1993) with Jim Schliestett. Journey was an innovative digital media apprenticeship program for teenagers. Participants worked side-by-side with animators and artists on real world projects in Digital Media Studios, a proto-hackerspace. The Journey apprentices’ showcased their work at SigGraph in Los Angeles.
Advisory Councils
Claudia has advised JeepneED, a 501(c)3 organization offering mobile science labs to rural communities in the Philippines. She has also advised Project Happiness, a 501(c)3 organization specializing in emotional resilience-building programs.
Trainings and Post Graduate Studies
Claudia is a graduate of the first West Coast .b Mindfulness for Teens certification (UC San Diego). In addition, she completed the 9-week Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) program (Stanford University) at the Greater Good Science Center, Berkeley, California. She is a certified SENG Model Parent Group facilitator. She trained in Sandplay Therapy with Evalyn Dundas. She trained with Annemarie Roeper in Qualitative Assessment.
Claudia studied 2nd order cybernetics, Conversation Theory, and the biology of love with Heinz von Foerster, Humberto Maturana, Hugh Dubberly, and Paul Pangaro. She studied Systems Design of Education with Barbara Vogl and Bela H. Banathy.
