Founder | Friendship Expert
URSTRONG
Dana Kerford is a Teacher, Friendship Expert, and the Founder of URSTRONG, a social- emotional wellbeing program for kids.
After starting her career as a 4th grade teacher in Canada, Dana began to recognize the complexity and intensity of childhood friendships. Motivated to create cultures of kindness in schools, Dana launched her first skills-based friendship program in 2009. Since then, URSTRONG’s whole-school friendship strategy has been adopted by schools around the world.
As the go-to expert on childhood friendships, Dana is regularly interviewed by media including The Today Show, Huffington Post, Sydney Morning Herald, and Canada’s daytime talkshow, The Social.
URSTRONG’s ground-breaking approach in empowering kids with friendship skills, led to Dana’s participation in an exclusive conference on gender equality at the White House in 2016. She has presented at education conferences across North America, Australia, & Asia and was a key contributor to SnapChat’s Global Friendship Report.
Dana is a mom, a true Teacher-At-Heart, and is currently working on her widely anticipated book.