Meet the Trainer: A Conversation with Danya Moten, Project Manager of Collaborative Learning

Danya Moten built her decades-long career on her belief that when the adults in a child’s life truly understand what that child needs, everything can change. As Project Manager of the Collaborative Learning Team at Cornerstones of Care, she puts that belief into practice every day as she designs and facilitates training experiences for foster, adoptive, kinship, and natural parents, as well as agency staff.

Although Danya’s beliefs guided her career journey every step of the way, her path to her position at Cornerstones of Care wasn’t linear. Before joining our team, she spent time as a Montessori teacher, nanny, early childhood educator, and governess before eventually transitioning into social work and child welfare. For most of the last decade she worked in case management with Child Protective Services for the State of Kansas, partnering with families navigating some of the most complex and painful situations imaginable. She also developed and implemented a mentorship program for youth involved in the juvenile justice system, creating opportunities for young people to build lasting relationships with trusted adults. Those experiences gave her a deep firsthand understanding of what families actually need when they’re in the thick of it.

Her beliefs are reflected in her day-to-day work, which includes designing curriculum, leading classroom and virtual training, and creating interactive simulations that translate research and best practices into strategies caregivers can use immediately. Her background across child development, neuroscience, trauma, and direct practice gives her a rare ability to teach courses that touch on these topics in ways that feel practical and human, rather than clinical and academic. Her goal is to help the people she teaches think and respond differently to challenging behaviors instead of overwhelming them with theory.

“We work with people, not paper,” she tells her classes. “Every child, every family, and every situation is unique. The moment we stop looking for one-size-fits-all answers is the moment we begin to truly understand the people we’re here to serve.”

Danya currently facilitates three courses for foster and resource parents:

Understanding Trauma Behaviors in Children: Survival, Safety, and Connection invites caregivers to look beyond what a child is doing on the surface and ask what that behavior is actually communicating.

Co-Regulating Before Consequences: Helping Children Borrow Calm Through Connection explores how caregivers can use their own regulated presence to help a child settle before reaching for consequences.

Helping Children Maintain Identity, Culture, and Connections focuses on belonging, self-worth, and the lifelong impact of helping a child.

Each course approaches a different topic, but they all emphasize the same things: safety, relationships, identity, and belonging. If she had to choose her favorite course to teach, it would be the “trauma behaviors” course.

“Behavior is communication,” she says. “Every behavior tells a story. Whether a child is expressing fear, grief, uncertainty, frustration, or simply trying to feel safe, that behavior is often the most effective form of communication they have in that moment.”

Danya says witnessing a caregiver’s understanding of challenging behaviors change in real time is one of the most powerful parts of her job. She explains “the most meaningful moments are when you can actually see a concept click for a caregiver. They begin to understand not just what to do, but why it matters, and how to do it. Watching that shift in perspective is incredibly powerful because they begin responding to the child instead of reacting to the behavior.” This leads to children learning new coping skills and more effective ways to communicate, which helps them form more stable and fulfilling relationships.

Danya also notes the benefits of her trainings extend past just the caregiver she’s teaching at any given time. Investing in the adults who care for children changes outcomes for both caregivers and every child whose life they touch. “Lasting change rarely begins by changing a child’s behavior,” she explains. “It begins by helping the adults around them see the behavior as communication and understand the unmet need beneath it.”

Danya’s beliefs and attitude are even evident in her personal life. She enjoys researching her familial and ancestral lineage, practicing root work and meditation, and immersing herself in the Black history in Kansas City. She also channels her creativity through interior design, creative writing, and spoken word, and you might find her at a ballet, a concert, or a Black rodeo on any given weekend.

Danya works and lives with intention, which tracks for someone whose core philosophy is based on the belief that when we truly see people, everything changes.

Register for a class taught by Danya or another one of our skilled trainers today.