Fernanda is a born-and-raised New Yorker (go Knicks) who lives and teaches in Manhattan, where she shares her life with her husband, her two children, and one sweet, slightly neurotic small dog.

A longtime third grade generalist, Fernanda found her way into mathematics one small project at a time: creating math journals for students hungry for puzzles and enrichment, an after-school program devoted to the out-of-the-box magic of math, and then a math learning lab for students who needed a little extra math love.

Somewhere along the way, she realized she loved watching kids discover math at every level, and she fell down the rabbit hole of how young minds build their understanding of number. Eventually, the rabbit hole closed over her, and she never wanted out.

Now a K–4 Math Specialist and math tutor, Fernanda focused her graduate work on family engagement and joy in mathematics, and she writes Seekers & Solvers, a blog for parents and the math-curious who want to understand, and maybe even enjoy, what’s happening in their child’s math education. She tutors students from the earliest counting years through Algebra 1, on Zoom and in person.

Because she knows how children build mathematical understanding, and because no two brains are alike, she doesn’t bring a one-size-fits-all routine to the table. She is AVMR 1, AVMR 2, and AVMR Fractions certified, which means she can tell you not just that a student is stuck, but exactly where and why. From there, the work becomes a partnership: she gets to know the student in front of her: how they think, what they already know, what makes them light up and what makes them shut down. Her sessions are comfortable, productive, and genuinely fun… the kind of thing everyone involved starts looking forward to.

She also builds digital tools for students, with one firm rule: technology should serve kids and augment their thinking, never replace the hands-on, analog relationship they have with math. And in a field full of pendulum swings, fluency versus understanding, drill versus discovery, Fernanda likes to hang out in the middle. (She’s afraid of heights, after all.)

Her guiding belief is that math, taught with passion and joy, is one of the most beautiful ways we have of exploring and understanding the world.