Momentos founder, Kia Ferrer, has a passion for treating children with respect and without condescension by providing them with honest information about challenging life events. She approaches these experiences as a series of discrete moments, or momentos in Spanish. She uses therapeutic art, dramatic play, and developmentally appropriate education to promote healthy interpretations of difficult circumstances through detailed examinations of these pivotal life-moments.

In 2018, Ferrer founded Momentos in Chicago, Illinois, to fill a need she identified in her work with hospitals, wherein child life services typically stop at discharge. She believes children undergoing medical treatment are entitled to psychosocial support in all the various contexts of their lives. Ferrer has a particular interest in helping children reintegrate into their schools, homes and communities after experiencing illness, medical trauma, and grief.

Born and bred in Chicago by two public school teachers, Ferrer has over 12 years of experience working in urban early childhood education, in palliative and hospice settings, in private practice, and as a child life specialist at several children’s hospitals in the Chicagoland area.

In addition to her work with Momentos, Ferrer is a Doctoral Fellow at Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development, and Loyola University Chicago’s School of Education. She co-authored “Transforming the Pediatric Experience” and has presented on several child development topics including “Virtualizing Therapeutic Interventions” at Mayo Clinic and “Communicating with Empathy and Compassion” at Make-A-Wish®. She is currently involved in research to strengthen professional standards of child life practices to serve marginalized pediatric populations.

Ferrer also teaches several online distance learning courses and offers workshops in schools, hospitals, and professional conferences around the world. Kia currently resides in Chicago with her two sons, Diego (10) and Marco (8) .