About Us

Yoursphere.com offers a vibrant, online, interactive, experience for kids and teens. Member’s safety and privacy come first through the application of common sense safeguards. The site devotes a hyper-focus towards supporting the positive interests, talents and aspirations of its members.

The site is free and is exclusively for children and young people through age 18. Yoursphere offers members a unique online community experience that is rewards-based, content appropriate, age-relevant, and socially conscious.

Yoursphere leads the global social media industry in online safety through our unparalleled common sense approach. We verify identities, require parental consent, perform a predator check, and use both technology and human oversight to monitor site activity. Because of these standards, Yoursphere is the sole youth-only online community approved by the Privacy Vaults Online Safe Harbor of the Federal Trade Commission.

Parents are empowered and educated with tools and information to help create a safety-first experience for their children online through Mary Kay’s Internet and Social Networking Safety Blog: Yoursphere for Parents.

A proud wife and mother of five children (both biological and adopted, ranging in age from 5-18 years old), Mary Kay faces the same challenges every parent does: keeping her kids safe; raising them to be good, happy and well-balanced people; and providing them with the tools and support to create their own future.

While Mary Kay readily admits that she didn't "get" the whole online social networking phenomenon at first, she quickly recognized its importance in her kids' lives. After researching the disturbing landscape of social networking sites—including endless inappropriate content and thousands of predators targeting youth—Mary Kay's mission became clear: raise the bar.

Conceived and founded by Mary Kay, Yoursphere is the first social networking service for youth that parents can embrace. Drawing on her corporate entrepreneurial experience as a media strategist, advertising, marketing and publishing VP formerly with CMP Media LLC, Mary Kay built the Yoursphere team.

Although her parents never had the opportunity to attend college, thanks to their support Mary Kay earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications (with a minor in Journalism) from Eastern Washington University.

Mary Kay and husband Ted live in Davis, CA.

A no-nonsense guy, Lee serves as Yoursphere's CEO and CFO. Raised on the West Coast, Lee's childhood was a baby boomer idyll of baseball, water skiing, and Boy Scout missions. He sees Yoursphere as a chance to bring that shared sense of community to today's youth.

A former Army officer and paratrooper, Lee holds an accounting degree from the University of Washington and an MBA from Governor's State University. His impressively varied career began in public and private accounting before shifting toward corporate banking at the Farm Credit System and, later, Wells Fargo. Lee was founder of Ventura County National Bank (eventually sold to City National Bank) and managed Department of Defense contracts and commercial businesses for Aerojet General.

Possessing, as he says, "more guts than brains," Lee embraces smart risk. Before turning his business acumen towards Yoursphere, Lee cofounded the innovative WePlayTV.com and, most famously, MaxPreps.com—the most visited and most comprehensive high-school sports website. In March 2007, MaxPreps.com was sold to CBS Sports.

Avid sailors and skiers, Lee and wife Kathy reside in Gold River, CA.

Perhaps stemming from her training as a police dispatcher, Tracy has a knack for solving problems quickly, often via creative solutions. For Tracy, the key to customer service is to always put the customer first.

"The foundation of all good companies is the relationships you build with your customers," she says.

Prior to joining Yoursphere, Tracy grew food distributor JC Produce's two-person customer service desk into a 20-employee statewide call center and was a founding manager of Trinity Fresh Management.

An avid reader, music lover and pop culture buff, Tracy and husband Jeff live in Sacramento with their three year old son Cole, golden retriever Bella and mentally challenged Boston terrier Archie.

Caleb has developed and implemented online strategies for clients including 3M, BestBuy, PeopleSoft, and InfoWorld.

While searching for a robust platform to implement on a community site three years ago, Caleb discovered Drupal. Inspired by its potential, Caleb quickly became a Drupal ninja. To help keep Yoursphere's website cutting-edge, Caleb explores the various intricacies of Drupal theming, production, maintenance, scalability, and development, often while listening to The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

Caleb lives in Northern California with his wife Beth and son Sam.

A graphic designer by training and a web developer by trade. A combination that has allowed Darren to grow and evolve with the Internet over the past 12 years working with a wide range of technologies. He's enjoyed working in both the corporate world using Microsoft's ASP/.net technologies to open source solutions such as PHP and Drupal the content management system/platform.

With a technical and creative background Darren often finds himself marvelling in the beauty of an elegant line of code. It's with this perspective that he enjoys crafting solutions that provide an endless supply of inspiration while also simply getting the job done.

For over 20 years Sean worked as a Recreation Professional specializing in youth and teens development creating programs, events, and empowering youth to make positive decisions for use of their free time.

Sean had always been a graphic, technology and web design hobbyist. Several years ago, following the same advice he has given youth a hundred times, Sean followed his passion to become a web developer. In a relatively short amount of time Sean has become an advanced Drupal Developer and now spends his days writing code, debugging browsers, and enjoying every minute of it.

When not knee deep in code, Sean spends time with his family (daughters Bethany & Jadyn, and wife Julie) usually playing games and enjoying the terrific San Fransisco East-Bay Area weather (usually swimming). When he finds a minute to himself it's often a chance to squeeze in a little guitar playing or some XBox.

Ela brings years of experience in customer service and Web design to Yoursphere. As leader of our Mom Advocator program, Ela is the go-to person for a network of parents working to create a better, safer Internet experience for their children.

A blogger and photography buff, Ela lives in Hayward, CA, with Husband Brian and son Kameron.

Jess graduated from University of California, Davis with a B.A. in Design with a Visual Communications emphasis. She is in charge of updating content within Yoursphere. Her experience in updating web site content came from her coursework at UC Davis and internships at places such as California Lighting Technology Center and KD Anderson and Associates, Inc.

She came to Yoursphere with an interest in learning how children and teenagers relate and react to different methods of web site design.

Jess currently resides in Sacramento.

Kurt brings years of experience in graphic design and film production to the Yoursphere team. A graduate of Otis College of Art and Design, Kurt has done extensive work on youth-oriented projects and brings a vibrant visual sensibility to Yoursphere.com.

Kurt enjoys basketball, reading, collecting comic books and, oddly, shopping at hardware stores.

He lives in Los Angeles with his dog Fred and cat Rucky.

Angel is a passionate gamer, film enthusiast, accomplished writer, and publishes his own gaming review blog. He’ll graduate with a degree in communications with an emphasis in Digital Media in 2010 from CSUS. With a younger brother and sister entrenched in social networking, he understands and has seen first-hand through his siblings the concerning culture, community and lack of privacy safeguards that await younger people online. He joins the Yoursphere team to leverage his writing skills, entrepreneurial streak and natural online safety advocacy to work with the Yoursphere team, partners, schools and other community groups.

Tina likes reading, going to the beach, and is studying to be an archaeologist.

Jack loves football, baseball, games, and is obsessed with earning Yoursphere credits! His favorite class at school is history.

Rachel likes to draw, run, and hang out with her buds.

Nathan loves skiing, acting, spontaneous road trips, and being entertained!

Madison loves to watch movies with her friends, laugh, and text. She also enjoys skiing and playing soccer.

Jack enjoys books, learning, sweets, getting on the computer, and TV.

Ashley enjoys reading, writing, drawing, photography, and family.

Shane loves to snowboard as well as hanging out with friends. He also loves sailing.

Brigit loves to dance and have fun with her friends. She is obsessed with her cats Purrl and Leo. She attends San Diego State University and is majoring in Environmental Studies.

Alexis loves reading good books, art, acting, photography, writing, traveling, and running.

Olivia loves to write, read any book she can get her hands on and play lacrosse for her school.

Riley enjoys writing, reading, working for animal rights, and traveling.

Claire loves Monty Python, soccer, music, karate, reading, art, and her mischievous chocolate lab.

Kit loves dance, gymnastics, and writing.

Chrissy is a creative girl from VA and loves to dance, do gymnastics and write. She loves her family and likes to spend time with her dog.

Laura loves writing and reading books, biking, snowball fights, and especially drawing.

Heather enjoys singing, reading, playing guitar and soccer, and hanging out with friends.

Julia is a member of her school's writers guild. She enjoys playing volleyball, reading, and hanging out with friends.

Emily is thrilled to be a Yoursphere Contributing Writer. In her spare time, she loves to read, play tennis, run, and has been concert-mistress for her school's orchestra. She also loves to write and has her own fashion blog.

Eric has been a Special Agent with the Wisconsin Department of Justice/Division of Criminal Investigation for 20 years. In 1999, Eric joined the state’s task force to fight the online exploitation of children, becoming an expert in his field. Eric has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s leading officers in apprehending sexual predators of children who use the Internet and/or cell phones to exploit children. He has been responsible for the arrest of more than 150 offenders from Wisconsin and around the nation. In addition, Eric educates parents, PTA’s, teachers, middle school and high school students about online safety. His presentations have been seen by more than 200,000 people around the nation. He has been interviewed by countless media outlets, including appearances on the Tyra Banks Show, CNN, and “Living Our Faith” with the former Archbishop of Milwaukee, now Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan.

Terry joins the team with over 33 years of law enforcement experience.

His career includes being a: United States Secret Service/Special Agent; Federal Bureau of Investigation/Special Investigator; Chief Felony Probation Officer; Director of International and Domestic Security; Law Enforcement Liaison and security consultant.

Terry's greatest enjoyment comes from spending time with his wife and three children. He resides in Southlake, Texas.

A member of Yoursphere's Safety Task Force, Leroy is a retired law enforcement officer with more than 30 years of service, including stints with the San Jose PD and the Solano County Drug Abuse Bureau.

After retiring from active duty, Leroy started his own successful business training civilians in personal protection techniques. Leroy lives in Alameda, CA.

A former United States Secret Service agent for eight years, Matt is an electronic crimes special agent and member of Yoursphere's Safety Task Force. As a Secret Service member, Matt investigated computer crimes and access device fraud, and performed forensic analysis of computers. For the past three years, Matt has worked as a special investigator for the FBI.

Matt also teaches psychology at Montgomery College. Matt is obsessed with electronic gadgets, so his free time is often spent reading about technology. Matt and his fiancée reside in Germantown, MD, and love to travel (next stop: the Grand Canyon).

Believing in the need for a safe and creative social network website for children and students, Tom has readily joined the Yoursphere team. Tom’s educational philosophy is that our young people should have every opportunity to explore their world without the fear of being harmed or subjected to compromising situations. In essence, student safety coupled with a challenging education environment will produce positive student results. Tom has spent nearly four decades teaching students and administrating school programs from kindergarten through high school for the DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependent School) and school sites in Colorado and California. He has assisted students with special learning needs, counseled them, and developed IEP (Individual Education Programs) to meet their goals. He has been a member of NCA (North Central Association) school accreditation teams in the evaluation of elementary schools.

Tom graduated from the University of Montana, University of Northern Colorado and received his Doctorate of Education Degree (Ed.D) from the University of Southern California. His hope is that every student will reach their full potential and become an asset to themselves and our nation.

Tom and his wife Judy live in Fair Oaks, California.

Jennifer lives with her four kids and two step kids ranging in age from 17 - 9 mos.

In her free time, over the years, she has built her own successful businesses, and now joins the Yoursphere team to manage our fund raising and community outreach programs.

In her spare time Jennifer tries to find time to sleep or read a good book to read! Jennifer has a BA in Business from Sonoma State University.

Keri grew up in Novato, CA, settling in Sonoma County in 1993. She attended the College of Marin, majoring in dental studies. She is currently serving as a board member to both a soccer and softball league and teaches CCD.

Keri is a busy mother of three children, ranging in age from 2 to 9 years old. They love to do anything involving the outdoors; camping, biking, walking and playing with their dogs.