About
Built by people who've spent their lives watching what works.
A mental fitness learning program for children ages 5–13 — built for families and educators.
Young Mind Masters exists because the tools that transform adult lives shouldn't be reserved for adults — and because the people behind it have seen, up close, what happens when children are given a real language for what they feel.
Our Mission
We give children a language for what they feel—and a way to choose what comes next.
Our Vision
A generation able to feel deeply, think clearly, and choose wisely.
Marijana
Founder, Young Mind Masters
Founder
Marijana C. Schwarte
Former global executive. Coach. Author. The mind behind the method.
From boardrooms to playgrounds — one insight changed everything. After 20 years in global finance and restructuring, Marijana saw how even highly successful adults were shaped by perfectionism, self-doubt, and the fear of not being enough.Different countries, different languages, different job titles — same patterns. That's when she understood: she wasn't looking at adult problems. She was looking at childhood patterns wearing suits.
She retrained completely — first as a Positive Intelligence coach, then as a functional medicine health coach — and worked on those patterns with adults. It worked. But every breakthrough came with the same quiet grief: this person could have learned this at eight. By the time most adults find this language, the patterns have been running unchecked for thirty years.
So she went upstream. She left the world of restructuring companies and adult coaching to do something harder — helping children build their inner world before anyone has to restructure it.
Young Mind Masters is the result: a program that turns mental fitness into memorable characters, stories, and practical tools children can actually use — every one of them written by Marijana herself, alongside her children's books The Gift of Mistakes and The Secret Side of Fear.
Not therapy or lectures, but skills taught the way children naturally learn.
Marijana doesn't build YMM alone.
Taking a methodology from a working theory to something thousands of children can use safely requires depth in clinical practice, in early-years education, and in operational rigor. Our board has all three.
Advisory Board Member
Snežana Volic, MA
Gestalt Psychotherapist. Early-Years Education Founder.
Snežana has spent over two decades studying how the earliest years shape a child's emotional, social, and cognitive life. As a founder of a kindergarten (est. 2001), she has designed programs on early-years adaptation, emotional literacy, body-safety and safeguarding for young children, and the return-from-maternity transition for parents.
In her private practice she works with parenting, partnership, grief, trauma, and transgenerational patterns. Her perspective grounds YMM in what is developmentally appropriate at every age the program touches.
Advisory Board Member
Kevin Schwarte
MBA. Duke University . Strategy & Operations.
Kevin brings the operational and strategic backbone behind the YMM mission. With an MBA from Duke University and a career building landmark commercial projects across the United States, he understands what it takes to turn an ambitious idea into something that actually gets built — on time, on budget, and at scale.
That same discipline is what enables YMM to grow responsibly: keeping the pedagogy uncompromised while the program reaches the schools and families that need it. Kevin oversees governance, growth strategy, and the standards that make a small program institutionally trustworthy.
Three commitments that guide every decision.
1
Children are not problems to fix.
Every Grumpy in YMM has a sincere job. We never frame a child's pattern as broken, bad, or shameful. The whole method only works because of this — and we won't compromise on it.
2
Rigor over cleverness.
YMM is original in its language and characters, but never in its science. Every layer of the program rests on established, well-evidenced frameworks. If something can't be grounded, it doesn't go in.
3
Trusted, not trendy.
We grow at the pace at which we can support every learning community and family well. We'd rather be the program educators quietly recommend to one another than the one going viral this month.
Now you know who's behind the work. Want to see it in action?
Start with one free lesson. No credit card. No commitment. Just 5 minutes with your child — and the first step toward a different kind of thinking.
Start the first lesson -free
A screen-free way to help children ages 5–13 notice, name, and choose — one calm habit at a time.
© 2026 Young Mind Masters. An educational program — not a clinical or therapeutic service.
