Jess Amato: Building Communities Through Play and Recreation

Recreation therapist Jess Amato shares a childhood of boating, card games, journaling, and outdoor activity that shaped her minimalist, active adulthood. At ASU she discovered her dream job had a name—recreational therapy—after advisors told her it “didn’t exist,” and she became an advocate for the field. Her career moved from pediatric and hospital settings to community-based work, Ability360, schools, and leading a school-based rec therapy program in New Hampshire while earning a master’s in community development and running a two-year project in Zimbabwe. She founded Platform to Play to expand access to play through school culture work, inclusion training, and global projects across Africa and beyond, emphasizing adaptability, cultural humility, and “practice what you preach.”