Who we are at
The Little Gym at Cherry Hill
In 2021 Beverly residents Amy and Chip Selley purchased The Little Gym of Danvers and relocated it from busy Route 114, to the Cherry Hill Corporate Park only about 7 minutes away, right behind everyone's summertime favorite, Cherry Farm Creamery. The Selley's built out this brand spankin' new facility through the Summer of 2021 following their dream of one day giving the community a bustling health and fitness center to serve the children and young families of Cape Ann and beyond.
Some background on how we got here, we met in college in Upstate New York 1991 and moved to the North Shore in 1994. We built our house in Beverly in 2003, putting down roots in this community with long term intentions. Since then we’ve become parents to Caden (18) and Macie (21), 2 dogs, River (3), and Willow (1), 8 chickens, and 70,003 honey bees (at last count!). Macie will be graduating from Simmons University in the Spring of 2024 in their 4+1 program; she will earn her Master's Degree in Behavioral Science with the goal to become a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), ultimately working with children on the autism spectrum. In June of 2022, Caden will be graduating from Essex North Shore Technical High School with a concentration in Environmental Technology, headed off to college in the Fall of 2022.
Amy’s background; after graduating from Syracuse University with a BS degree in Early Childhood Education in 1992, I worked for 10 years at the preschool located at the Harvard University School of Business in Cambridge. Most recently (for the past 10 years), I have been working at Beverly Public Schools as a preschool teacher in the intensive - integrated classroom. My role has been to work with developmentally delayed children, often on the autistic spectrum, and help to successfully transition them into Kindergarten with other children. My philosophy has always been to focus on the whole child; physical, mental, and emotional. I posted my first blog here for those who want to hear more and learn about post-pandemic child socialization. Lastly, as a teacher my work can only affect the amount of children in my classroom - not more than a dozen per year. By leaving my job as a public school teacher and dedicating my full time efforts towards operating The Little Gym: I will be able to positively affect 100’s of children per year, and I couldn’t be more humbled by that opportunity.
Chip’s background; I have 30+ years of startup and small business experience in several industries, as well as some corporate sales. As an entrepreneur since 2010, I’ve had some wins and losses. In 2010 I founded a music-related software service for restaurants (called iJukebox) that went from an idea to being iterated to bring a streaming music service to market into many well-known restaurant chains. That startup failed, and it was an expensive learning experience, being a nice-to-have in a small addressable market. In 2016 I joined Rocketbook as the third full time team member, where I launched their corporate (B2B) sales division which was purchased by Bic pens in December of 2020. Since 2018 I have been working with Boston Surface Railroad to capitalize an interesting project that would bring passenger rail to several of New England’s gateway cities - unfortunately Covid put that project on hold - which brought me here!
But it's hardly about the owners - it's about the amazing team that trains every day, and prepares every day, to teach successful classes for your children. Led by Gym Director Miss Maddy Johnson, we know it's all about the culture, and making every team member feel valued, inspired and empowered.
Below are the profiles of our team, flip through the pics and learn about your child's instructor. We have High School students, college students and graduates; all of them working hard to create a positive learning environment and opportunities for your child to try new things and build self-confidence, all while having tons of Serious Fun!
We invite you to call or stop by anytime – we are looking forward to getting to know you and sharing more about The Little Gym at Cherry Hill. C'mon in and check us out, sign up for a free trial class here.
