Dr. Amy Warren is an applied developmental scientist, author, and perinatal educator with a focus on positive human development as a pathway to global flourishing. Her expertise centers on developmental transitions and the conditions that support positive human development, particularly during infancy, adolescence, and matrescence. As a Nesting Ambassador, she seeks to translate the science of the Evolved Nest into accessible, practical guidance that helps parents reconnect with their own innate wisdom, so that children’s inherent wisdom can remain intact.
Her Nesting Ambassadorship is expressed across multiple interconnected layers. Amy, alongside her husband and colleague Dan Warren, developed a lifespan model of education that reimagines education as life-sustaining ecology: the intentional design of environments that restore the conditions humans evolved to expect and support optimal development from birth through elderhood. Together, they founded Home Base Learning Center (2016-2025), a nature-based elementary school that became the first living expression of this educational model. Amy is now extending this work to the beginning of life through the development of an Evolved Nest-aligned birth and postpartum program for new families and the professionals who support them. Drawing on her background in ethnographic documentary research, she also seeks to illuminate contemporary examples of families and communities living in ways that reflect humanity’s evolutionary heritage, helping make species-typical care visible, practical, and culturally imaginable.
Amy is a Senior Child Development Researcher at Fluent Research, where she studies child development, education, and family wellbeing through qualitative and ethnographic methods. She is co-author of Visualizing the Lifespan (Wiley) and co-editor of Thriving and Spirituality Among Youth (Wiley) and Current Directions in Developmental Psychology(Prentice Hall). Amy holds a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Clark University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in child development from Tufts University. Her professional background also includes training as a postpartum doula, lactation counselor, Touchpoints and Newborn Behavioral Observation practitioner, Reiki Master Teacher, and advisor to organizations working to improve maternal and infant wellbeing.
Amy’s path to this work began with questions about peace, social justice, and human flourishing. Raised in a politically active parsonage and church involved in the Central American Sanctuary Movement, she initially studied political science and genocide before realizing that many of society’s deepest fractures emerge from developmental experiences much earlier in life, and that the true leverage point for flourishing lies in the earliest relationships. That insight led her to developmental science and, eventually, to the Evolved Nest, which brought coherence to her work, offering a species-level framework for positive human development.
Today, her work is guided by the conviction that the blueprint for human wellbeing is not lost. It can be renewed by restoring the ecological and relational conditions humans evolved to expect. Through science, education, storytelling, and community building, Amy hopes to help families remember that they are Nature, restoring the ecology of maternal wisdom so that children’s inherent wisdom can remain intact.
Learn more about Amy’s Nesting Ambassador Community Project.
Read Amy’s posts on Kindred Magazine