Danielle Matarasso

Before I describe the work, I should describe the order things sit in for me. I am a mom of three. Most of what I think about — and most of the reason SEL Group exists — comes from trying to help other moms protect the kind of childhood that happens in real rooms, with real teachers, in front of other real kids. The studio down the street is one of the last places that still reliably delivers that.

The professional background underneath that conviction is unusually well suited to the work. I started in finance and accounting, which is where I learned to read a business honestly — what the numbers are actually saying, where the margin really comes from, what a clean balance sheet feels like versus one that has been tidied up for a meeting. That foundation has shaped every operating role since.

I spent years at a Chicago technology company running sales, product marketing, customer marketing, and business development. The throughline across those functions was the same: understand the customer carefully, build the operating motion that serves them, and make sure the people doing the work have the systems to do it well. That is, in plain language, exactly what an independent studio needs and almost never has.

Today I run Numeriq Advisors, a consulting practice doing operating and value creation work for lower mid-market companies. The work is hands-on — I am in the weekly reviews with leadership teams, working through the sales process, adjusting alongside operators in real time. A core part of what I do is getting the operations of a business running cleanly enough that the people who are actually good at it can focus on that, not on the overhead that surrounds it.

SEL Group applies the same instinct to a category I care about personally. A studio owner spending her Tuesday evenings on billing disputes and her Saturday mornings on scheduling software is not spending that time on the class, the student, or the parent relationship. That is the part I am built to fix.

Alongside this, I write AI After Carpool, a newsletter about the intersection of AI and family life. The conviction behind the newsletter is the same one behind SEL Group: understanding what AI does well makes you sharper about protecting what it cannot do at all. The hour a child spends in a real room, learning to trust her body and take a correction with grace, is not replaceable. If anything, it is becoming more valuable.

I live in the Chicago area with my three kids. SEL Group takes its name from their initials. Part of what I am building here is something I want to be able to point to — a real business, built on a real conviction, in the community where they are growing up.