Who We Are

The Groove team is a tight-knit group of passionate educators, therapists and social entrepreneurs. We believe all children have the capacity to live full, happy lives when they’re empowered with the tools to connect and communicate. With a focus on the needs of families affected by disability, we create products that integrate social and emotional learning into moments of family connection.

Our Story

The Groove was founded by long-time dance educator and youth advocate, Debra Giunta. Back in 2008, Debra founded a company called Design Dance to simply bring dance to more kids in her home city of Chicago. While Debra’s dance background was rooted in traditional training at top Chicago dance studios, she soon realized that dance education had the power to teach more than high kicks and pirouettes - creative movement was a powerful tool for encouraging healthy child development.

Since then, Design Dance has grown to a team of over 40 dance education professionals and brought classes to hundreds of K-12 classrooms. After watching the Design Dance community of over 2000 students annually overcome anxiety, improve their school work, and grow healthy relationships with their peers through the power of movement, she knew it was time to bring these benefits home to families everywhere. The Groove was born in 2017, fueled by our team’s passion for helping families integrate healthy developmental processes into their daily lives.

Today, with the help of pre-school teachers and therapists, The Groove has grown into a comprehensive a family-based program that integrates imaginative audio activities, creative movement videos and hands-on crafts to help the whole family cultivate socialization skills, mindfulness practices, and creative expression.