About Kimberly Christenson

Kimberly Christenson is the founder of The Grateful Guardian and a professionally trained special education advocate with both formal credentials and deep, generational lived experience. She successfully completed SEAT 1.0 and SEAT 2.0 through the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA), one of the nation’s leading and most rigorous training programs for special education advocacy.

Kimberly holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Texas at San Antonio and is currently enrolled in the graduate program for Visual Impairment at Louisiana Tech University, the nation’s top program for preparing professionals who educate blind and low-vision individuals. She is also a long-standing and active member of the National Federation of the Blind.

Her lived experience is equally foundational to her expertise. Kimberly is disabled herself—blind in one eye, low vision in the other, and hearing impaired. She is the parent of a medically fragile, low-vision child, giving her direct insight into the emotional, physical, and systemic challenges families face. She also served as a caregiver for both of her parents for over a decade. Her mother was blind, and her father lived the last ten years of his life confined to a wheelchair after a massive stroke. Through these experiences, she navigated medical systems, disability programs, state agencies, and long-term care from multiple angles.

Kimberly understands disability systems not from a single perspective, but from nearly every side: as a disabled adult, as the parent of a disabled child, and as the caregiver of disabled parents. This layered, generational experience allows her to guide families with clarity, precision, and compassion.

She founded The Grateful Guardian to offer the kind of support she once needed herself—direct, practical, trauma-informed guidance that cuts through overwhelm and replaces confusion with clear steps forward. Every person she supports receives a combination of professional training, strategic insight, and real-life understanding that cannot be replicated by theory alone.