AMANDA GONZALES Ed.D (she/her)

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF SCHOOLS & PROGRAMS

As Managing Director of Schools & Programs, Amanda serves as a key strategic partner and the lead for Moonshot’s programs, including the Residency initiatives. She is a Cohort 2 and School Launcher Residency alumna. Born and raised in Denver, Amanda’s passion for youth advocacy and social change has been her north star in her 26 years of work with teens in the education and community organization fields. Her drive is rooted in the indigenous Nahuatl word tiahui, which roughly means to move, change, or go forward. With the belief that education can get one out of their situation, her commitment to empowerment and movement has always been focused on young people of color in Denver and Adams counties.  

Over the past 26 years, she has served in roles and fields including high school principal and middle school administrator, gang outreach and violence response, field-based mental health, youth mentoring, program development, and teaching across all middle & high school content areas. She gets excited to navigate special education policy, where she specializes in serving teens with affective needs and significant mental health disabilities. A first-generation college graduate and child of a Displaced Aurarian, Amanda holds a B.A. from MSU Denver in Special Education and Linguistically Diverse Education and an M.A. from the University of Northern Colorado in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Special Education Administration. She earned an Ed.D. in Leadership for Educational Equity with a concentration in Urban and Diverse Communities, where her dissertation examined the impact of movimiento, conocimiento, integración, and entendimiento on young women participating in an Indigenous-rooted rites of passage program through a Chicana feminist lens. As a researcher, she is grounded in the frameworks of Latina/o Critical Theory (LatCrit), Chicana feminism, and TribalCrit. Her work in third-space educational programs for Black and Brown youth drives her commitment to applying this knowledge in support of positive youth outcomes. She is the founder of Ollin Educational Consulting and the Co-Founder and former Director of Cultivation at Be The Change Community School. She serves as adjunct faculty at the University of Northern Colorado and was named the 2022 Educational Leader of the Year by the Colorado Association of Bilingual Educators for her advocacy for bilingual students and families. 

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