Ymasumac Marañón Davis is an educational consultant, intuitive life coach and author. Like her name, her life reflects the unique perspectives she brings to the important work of highlighting social justice issues of our time, bringing individuals to reflect on their unique gifts applied to their life’s purpose and writing the stories of truth that swirl around her as she moves between worlds. Her ancestry is from the Quechua people of Bolivia and the pilgrims of New England.
Ymasumac, also known as Yma, spent part of her childhood in the United States learning the experiences of being an immigrant’s daughter on the one hand and on the other the daughter of a mother of European descent. Her formative years were spent in a small village in the Yucatán Peninsula in Southern Mexico, where she honed her second language and her Latino roots took hold. Upon her return to the United States, with a perceptive eye for culture, she became aware of the racial tensions that existed in schools and set out to find a way to bring together her duality: Indigenous and White.
Through her late teens and into her twenties, Yma sought out her own healing and eventually became an intuitive life coach. Deeply invested in children and creating an environment for them that recognized their gifts, she also became a bilingual teacher. She was soon drawn to coordinate parent involvement programs at a district office. This powerful work engaged a diverse community of parents, systematically developing capacity in both families and schools to collaborate effectively and serve student needs.
And then, the iPad came out, and everything changed. Yma explored using her personal iPad to teach English Learners and At-Risk students. At a time when few were engaged in this work, Yma was excited to see how such devices could empower parents and students. This exploration led Yma to take a position as Educational Technology Coordinator at the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools. Yma and her team were on the cutting edge of thoughtful technological integration, shifting the learning culture in the classroom to embrace technology and to continue with a strong pedagogical position of learning. Yma brought her understanding of bilingual education, parent involvement and her intuitive understanding of how culture impacts change to the evolving K-12 landscape.
Today, Yma is an educational consultant with her own business: Limitless Learning Lab. She employs all of her gifts, including being an intuitive coach, in her work. She continues to explore the profound shifts in our learning cultures and to investigate how we can best serve students of all backgrounds. She has a keen eye and passion for issues of equity and whether students of color are being empowered fairly in their school environment. She’s an international speaker addressing issues such as: changing perceptions in learning cultures, embracing families as learning partners, creating our personal healing cultures, and addressing equity by empowering student voices. Projects Yma is currently exploring and researching: how technology stresses the dominant culture, our shifting learning spaces, and how to create a mindset characterized by humility. As well as several writing projects, including the books: “Our Shifting Learning Cultures” and “In-tu-it: Intuitively Creating Your Own Healing Culture”. Yma is married to a fabulous partner and friend, Tod Davis, and has four children.