Kimberly Mathis Pitts

Kim grew up in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina where she spent her childhood days reading old copies of National Geographic magazines and dreaming of far-away places. She got her first passport in the summer of 1989 to study abroad at a university in Cholula, Mexico. That summer, her entire life changed. She met a farm boy from Morganton, NC and life has been an adventure ever since! After they married and graduated from college, they joined the Peace Corps and moved to Senegal. When they returned from Africa, they both started master’s programs at the University of New Mexico (UNM).

 Kim, who has a B.A. in Spanish from Western Carolina University, pursued an M.A. in Latin American Studies. During the three years of her master’s study, she had two sons, Forrest and Walker. She knew, even before they were born, that she wanted them to be bilingual. There, her quest for bilingual children’s books came alive.

Over the next thirty years, she lived and traveled extensively throughout Mexico and Central America. Her first teaching position was at a bilingual elementary school in Mexico in 1996. She has taught Spanish and sociology courses at the high school and university levels in several US States as well as Mexico.

While pursuing her Ph.D. in sociology at UNM, her focus shifted to gendered violence.  Her academic work primarily focused on Latin American women and domestic violence. She has published articles and book reviews, served as an academic article reviewer for top journals, and written sociology test banks and PowerPoints for a major university textbook publisher. 

During the four years that she has lived in Guatemala, she has visited, volunteered with, and supported a number of NGOs. The link between literacy/education and poverty is clearly visible, especially for young girls. While she embraces the transition back to her roots in bilingual education and is excited about sharing her adventures, her hope is that her books will contribute to increased opportunities for young Guatemalan girls.