With over 20 years of experience in financial counseling and social-emotional learning, Curtis L. Chambers has dedicated his career to one of the most overlooked intersections in human wellness: the relationship between financial trauma and emotional health.

His groundbreaking work weaves together Polyvagal Theory, shame resilience research, and practical financial education to create transformative healing experiences for individuals and communities navigating economic hardship, intimate partner violence, re-entry challenges, and systemic financial oppression.

As the creator of Forward SELF™, Curtis built a program that doesn't ask people to simply budget better — it asks something more honest: tend to the biology, the story, and the shame before the spreadsheet. That conviction has shaped his work across correctional facilities, schools, community organizations, and corporate spaces.

Curtis brings lived authority alongside his credentials — the deep knowledge of someone who has witnessed, and helped reverse, what financial trauma actually does to a life.

My story begins in the heart of a complex childhood. As the middle child between two neurodiverse sisters, I gained a unique lens into the world of difference, sensitivity, and the silent strength it takes to hold space for others.

From a young age, I learned to navigate the unspoken currents of a home shaped by religious extremism, strict authority, and physical discipline — where obedience was demanded, emotions were silenced, and love was often tangled with fear. When my mother chose to leave her marriage and raise us on her own, I became her right hand, witnessing her courage, exhaustion, and survival firsthand.

I was often seen as the "rebellious" child — the one who questioned and resisted. What many didn't see was that beneath that exterior lived a deep desire to understand, to care, and to heal. I became a mother at a young age myself, raising my son while still piecing together the shattered parts of my own story. It was through those years as a single mom that I stepped into advocacy — not just for myself, but for families like mine.

When I learned how my own trauma and environment had carved paths in my nervous system and behavior, it changed everything. Today, I bring lived experience, clinical expertise, and a culturally responsive, trauma-informed lens to the work I do with families, educators, mental health professionals, and communities.