Influential Women: Amy Schell: Uniting Executive Leadership, Advocacy to Restore Childhood Joy Through Safer Schools

ID, UNITED STATES, November 11, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Founder and President of the Foundation for Safer Schools and Senior Managing Director for Farmers Insurance in Washington State, Amy Combines More Than Two Decades of Leadership With a Mission to Protect Children

Cocolalla, Idaho — Amy Schell is a seasoned insurance executive and nonprofit founder with more than 20 years of experience leading agency growth, multi-state operations, and strategic business transformation. As Senior Managing Director for Farmers Insurance in Washington State, she oversees agency distribution, sales performance, and organizational growth while developing high-performing teams across complex markets. She is also the Founder and President of the Foundation for Safer Schools, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating safer learning environments through awareness, education, preparedness, and community collaboration. Throughout her career, Amy has built and transformed organizations from the ground up, leading territory expansion, operational turnarounds, and large-scale change initiatives. Her leadership philosophy combines strategic execution with a strong commitment to developing people and fostering sustainable business growth.

Amy’s career began in education, where she spent nearly nine years as a Montessori-style teacher before moving into the insurance industry in 2004. Since then, she has held progressive leadership roles with American Family Insurance, Allstate, and Farmers Insurance, serving as an agency owner, district leader, state director, and senior executive. She has earned Property and Casualty, Life and Health, and Securities licenses, including the Series 6, 63, and 26, along with the Chartered Leadership Fellow (CLF) and LUTCF designations. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Leadership and Management, studied at Copenhagen Business School and the American College, and continues to expand her expertise through executive education in digital transformation, change management, and nonprofit leadership.

Amy founded the Foundation for Safer Schools after watching children walk into school carrying fear instead of excitement, a reality she decided was unacceptable. At the time, she had spent more than two decades as an insurance executive and understood risk and protection, but she had no nonprofit experience, curriculum, or playbook. What she had was a conviction that childhood joy was being stolen and that someone needed to act.

Under her leadership, the Foundation was established on the belief that meaningful school safety rests on three essential pillars: Awareness, Education, and Preparedness. Together, these pillars help schools recognize potential dangers sooner, make informed decisions, and respond more effectively when every second matters.

“School safety shouldn’t be measured only by how we respond when something goes wrong,” says Schell. “It should also be measured by what we’re doing every day to prevent something from happening in the first place.”

To operationalize these pillars, the Foundation has developed signature programs designed to build a culture of prevention rather than mere emergency reaction:

Parents on Patrol (POP): A practical, volunteer-based program that brings approved parent and community volunteers into school safety as extra eyes and ears. POP volunteers monitor parking lots, entrances, arrival areas, playground activities, and dismissal loading zones to recognize unusual activity and quickly alert school officials or call 911 when necessary. “Sometimes the first step toward preventing a tragedy is simply having someone notice that something isn’t right,” Schell explains.
S.A.F.E. Schools Program: Offers educational learning modules for teachers, administrators, and school staff to help them recognize risks, improve communication, and implement a TEAM approach to safety.
R.E.A.L. Futures & R.E.A.L. Choices: Age-appropriate safety awareness curricula for students. R.E.A.L. Futures equips grades 6–9 with decision-making skills based on the principles of Refuse, Explain, Avoid, and Leave. R.E.A.L. Choices introduces kindergarten through 5th-grade students to foundational safety habits.
The Foundation serves schools across the Inland Northwest and nationwide by providing school safety training, violence prevention education, emergency preparedness, grant funding support, and a FREE School Safety Guide to help schools launch their own Parents on Patrol initiatives without significant financial strain. Its mission remains focused on restoring childhood joy, one student, one school, and one community at a time.

Amy attributes her success to people and purpose, in that order and inseparable. She has learned that nobody builds anything alone, and every team she has built, from multi-state insurance operations to a nonprofit serving schools throughout the region, has taught her the same lesson. Success comes from the superintendents, educators, business partners, and team members who extend their trust, and that trust is earned by showing up and following through every time. When work is tied to something that truly matters, which for Amy means protecting children and restoring the joy of childhood, she finds a resilience she did not know she had. Difficult seasons do not keep her down for long, because she knows exactly why she is getting back up.

The best career advice Amy ever received was simply to be real. When she founded the Foundation, she assumed that leading a nonprofit meant having all the answers, but she has since learned that people do not follow perfection; they follow authenticity. Superintendents, educators, parents, and community partners can tell the difference between someone performing a mission and someone living one. She encourages leaders to be who they are, to be kind, and to pay attention to the ripple effect of their actions on the schools they serve, the partners beside them, and the children counting on them. Leading with care for how decisions affect others, she has found, builds trust that outlasts any single program, grant, or title.

Her advice to young women is not to wait for an invitation. Amy urges them to raise their hands, start the program that does not exist, and apply for the grant everyone says they will not get. She tells them to know their mission thoroughly, because speaking to real impact, real students, real schools, and real funding-delivered changes the conversation. She also stresses the importance of finding mentors who will tell them the truth and advocates who will say their names in rooms they have not yet entered. Much of her proudest work, both in her executive career and at the Foundation, began with someone telling her it could not be done, and she built it anyway.

Amy describes the biggest challenge in her field as urgency colliding with capacity. The threats facing students today are real and escalating, from school safety concerns to a fentanyl crisis that has devastated communities across Idaho, and schools must confront them with stretched budgets and exhausted staff. Educators want to protect their students but do not always have the funding, training, or bandwidth to do it alone. That is where she sees the opportunity, because communities are more ready to act than she has ever seen. In 2026, the Foundation has helped secure hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant and private funding, and Amy has learned that the resources and the will already exist. What is often missing is the connector, and that is the role the Foundation for Safer Schools was built to play.

Her values come down to showing up, telling the truth, and protecting what matters. At the Foundation, that means being someone a superintendent can call knowing something will get done, being honest about what can and cannot be delivered, and remembering that behind every program and grant is a child who deserves to feel safe. In her personal life, it means being present for her family, keeping her word, and protecting the people she loves. Amy does not believe in being one person at work and another at home, and the Foundation’s mission of restoring childhood joy is not something she clocks out of. She holds that children deserve safety, families deserve peace of mind, and communities are strongest when people take care of one another.

Amy’s commitment to her community extends well beyond the Foundation. She serves on the membership and planning committee of her Chamber of Commerce, is president of the LATIP organization, and is a member of the Idaho School Board Association as well as ASMAT and its Field Development Subcommittee. She also shares her leadership lessons in writing, with published articles on reinvention, the courage to begin again, and what founding a nonprofit taught her about purpose-driven leadership. Recognized for building strong cultures, mentoring future leaders, and driving meaningful results inside and outside the insurance industry, Amy Schell continues to prove that executive skill and heartfelt purpose can work together to give children back the joy of a safe childhood.

Learn More about Amy Schell:

Through her Influential Women profile: https://influentialwomen.com/connect/amy-schell or through Foundation for Safer Schools, https://foundation4saferschools.org/

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