When Fiorella Occhionero started researching screen time and childhood development, she wasn’t expecting it to change the course of her career.
The longtime manufacturing executive and mother of two had started digging into how schools were handling smartphones.
And what she found didn’t sit right.
“There was no consistent approach,” Occhionero told Refresh Miami. “Some teachers enforced their own rules, some schools ignored the issue completely. And the more I read about the impacts of screen addiction and social media on kids, the more I felt we were failing them.”
Occhionero’s concerns led to the creation of Focus Safe, a startup based in Boca Raton that offers software to help schools manage student-owned devices during class time. The product isn’t designed to block phones entirely but rather restrict nonessential use in a way that works for parents, educators, and kids alike.
“There’s a lot of fear from parents about not being able to reach their children,” she said. “We realized early on that unless we bridged the gap between safety and attention, we wouldn’t solve the real problem.”
Focus Safe’s model doesn’t involve locking phones in pouches or removing them entirely. Instead, it gives schools an easy way to enforce app restrictions during the day, while preserving access to emergency communications or medical needs. The product can be set up in under an hour and customized for each school, and parents can opt in to monitor usage with a companion app.
The company is launching at a moment of growing concern. Florida recently passed legislation banning cell phone use during school hours in grades K-8. But as Occhionero pointed out, laws are only as effective as the enforcement behind them.
“It’s not that the rules are wrong, it’s that we’re asking teachers to enforce them, in classrooms already stretched thin. It’s not sustainable,” she said. “Focus Safe is meant to be the system that helps schools implement those policies without adding more work.”
A less visible feature of Focus Safe is what Occhionero calls “emergency resilience.” Because their software creates a local network independent of school WiFi, it can also be used for decentralized emergency communication and response. That means students, teachers, and parents can stay connected in high-stress moments, without turning to unregulated tools or mass texting.
“We realized we could do more than just reduce distraction,” she said. “We could make schools safer, not just in the classroom, but in the hallways, during lunch, in transition periods, all those unstructured moments when a lot can go wrong.”
Founded in early 2024, Focus Safe has quickly grown to a team of eight and is preparing for district-level pilots and research collaborations, including with Florida Atlantic University. Occhionero, who is participating in Global Ventures at The Research Park at FAU, credits Boca’s mix of academic talent, entrepreneurial energy, and post-COVID influx of tech professionals for helping the company find momentum.
“After living in Europe and New York, I came back to my hometown of Boca thinking it would just be base while starting a family. But this area is different now,” she said. “There’s real talent here, real resources, and people who care deeply about building family. But this area is different now,” she said. “There’s real talent here, real resources, and people who care deeply about building the next thing.”
This story was originally published by Refresh Miami, a WLRN News partner. Refresh Miami is the oldest and largest tech and startup community in Miami with over 16,000 members.
