Meet The Founders
Brook Fletcher, Ed.S.
Brook Fletcher came to Fayetteville, North Carolina, at nineteen years old and never left. This is where she started her education journey, built her career, raised her family, and planted the roots of what would become Inspired Horizons. Fayetteville is not where she is from. It is who she became.
With more than twenty years of experience operating licensed family child care programs at both the state and federal levels, Brook brings a depth of practical knowledge that is rare in early childhood education. Her career spans DOD federal child care at Fort Bragg, corporate child care director roles with Sunshine House and KinderCare, and leadership experience inside national child care management systems. She has worked at every level of this field — from the classroom floor to the director’s office — and built her understanding of what breaks down and why from the inside out.
She is the founder and longtime operator of A Mother’s Touch, her founding licensed Family Child Care Home, which has maintained a consistent waitlist throughout its operation and earned a 2026 Best of NC recognition. A Mother’s Touch is the founding pilot of the Inspired Horizons network and the proof of concept behind everything the organization is building.
Her path into early childhood education is personal. As the mother of a child with severe and profound autism, Brook understands firsthand what it means to search for care that truly sees your child — and what it costs families when that care does not exist. That experience did not just inform her work. It shaped the entire framework of what Inspired Horizons is designed to do.
In 2024, Brook and her co-founder attended the Pentagon Hall of Heroes for the signing of a DOD intergovernmental support agreement, among only two women of color present for that historic event. She holds an Education Specialist degree in early childhood education and continues to operate, build, and advocate for the families and providers of Cumberland County every day.
Brook’s husband is a disabled veteran. Their family’s connection to Fort Bragg and the military community runs deep, and it shows in every aspect of how Inspired Horizons serves families.
Starr Mastrodonato, M.Ed.
Starr Mastrodonato has built her career at the intersection of military child care, systems leadership, and strategic change, shaped by life as a mother navigating military transitions, as the spouse of a veteran, and as a leader forged within some of the most operationally demanding institutions in the country.
Across Army and Air Force installations, she led Department of Defense child and youth programs where compliance, continuity, and execution were non-negotiable. She translated policy into practice, built systems that families could rely on across relocations and deployments, and led with both discipline and humanity - CONUS and OCONUS.
She was a driving force behind the Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood program, a nationally recognized initiative that extended access to quality child care for military families beyond the installation gate, and she spent her career ensuring that the systems serving children did not reset every time a family moved. That consistency, she understood, is not administrative. It is care.
On multiple occasions, she was called to the Pentagon to sign Department of Defense intergovernmental support agreements, among an exceptionally small group of attendees, and was one of only two women of color present for those historic signings. She was also recognized in the Hall of Heroes, not as ceremony, but as a direct acknowledgment of the infrastructure she built and the communities she transformed. Few people enter those rooms once. She entered them with standing.
Her contribution to this field has never been confined to a single installation, organization, or country. The frameworks she built, the partnerships she forged, and the policy she translated into action have shaped how military communities and the broader child care sector design systems for children and families. That reach is global. That impact is documented. And it continues.
Inspired Horizons is the culmination of that work, co-founded to expand licensed child care capacity, strengthen the early childhood workforce, and build systems designed to last. Starr leads its strategic partnerships and external alignment with the same standard that has defined every chapter of her career.
She holds a Master of Education in Special Education. She continues to operate, build, and advocate for families and providers nationwide, permissionlessly.
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