Amanda Swisten was born on a chilly December night, in the frost bitten city of Manhattan. She started swimming at the age of 4 and from then on, it was competitive swimming year round for her as swam in meets and competitions up and down the east coast, and broke quite a few records. She was raised in Connecticut till she was 14 then her family moved to very Charlottesville, Virginia, for a change of life. There she went to a small private school where she found it hard to adjust. She studied drama, becoming the youngest person to go through the department at the University of Virginia. Amanda started to work in a gym at her free time, received an aerobics certification and personal training certificate at the age of 16. She also started to model around this time. A scout approached her that summer to go to NYC and give the modeling biz a try. As she was unable to go to NYC for the test pictures, so her mom, who experiments with photography, shot most of her stuff. College was temporarily put off and she chose to travel, model and work at a young age. She very soon realised that women have a limited window of opportunity in the modeling biz, so she did manage to attend an interior design school in New York as a correspondent student and apprenticed as a designer on some major projects and graduated with a certificate in interior design.