My Red Couch Talk with Monica Shah

Posted on February 20, 2026February 13, 2026 by Angie Weinberger

Monica Shah Zeeman has been working with international families for twenty years to support their lives abroad. I met her at ETH the renowned federal university in Zürich, Switzerland where she had moved with her family. Monica is the founder of Children First which offers early schooling and a tutoring center for students in Swiss schools. She is a child development specialist with an unusual background in social entrepreneurship.

She first worked in Bern as an Assistant Headteacher at the da Vinci Academy. I discovered when I invited her today that after graduating from Oxford University the first charity she founded was part of a network of community education charities across the UK one of which became the first Academy school in the UK, in East London. She has a psychoanalytic diploma and launched a counseling service for mothers with babies called the Mothering Project in north London.

Her textbook ‘Working with Parents’ was published by Heinemann in 2001 before she moved to Switzerland. In Zurich she gives talks on Choosing the best school for your child and parenting Multilingual Children, is the President of Circle of Schools and you can find some of her writing as well as other interesting articles on the Family Matters Switzerland website. Monica lives in Zurich, Switzerland.