Welcome to Yoursphere
Yoursphere is an outlet that connects youth and sparks creativity
Yoursphere was founded in 2008 to create a premium lifestyle brand that connects youth, sparks creativity and exceeds social networking norms. As a member you'll enjoy connecting with people of similar interests and taking part in exclusive opportunities designed to inspire you to "create your future". Yoursphere is based on fun and engaging communities we call "spheres," ranging from music to sports, fashion and more.
Part of what makes Yoursphere different from other sites is that we reward community members simply for their involvement. Rewards? Yes, that's right; you'll receive both rewards and recognition just for your positive involvement like joining spheres, blogging, commenting, and sharing content! There are also many opportunities to enter contests, apply for a variety of scholarships and participate in unique, once-in-a-lifetime events. And, as an added benefit for joining the Yoursphere community, a portion of all membership fees go into the Yoursphere Create Your Future scholarship fund and another equal portion from our net paid advertising revenue is donated to well-deserved philanthropies.
You won't find any adults on Yoursphere. How do we keep them out of your business? We require each and every Yoursphere member's age and gender to be verified by their parent or guardian. This way you know you are truly interacting with your peers.
Parents in turn are verified to be who they say they are through our quick and simple verification process administered by our online age and identity partner NetIDme (http://netidme.net). The bonus is your parent can relax knowing you are in a trustworthy environment. We're here to provide a safer place and keep the creepers (predators, pornographers, sex offenders, and those setting up fake profiles) away!
With your involvement (and your parents' help, because they, more than likely, are paying the Internet bill and membership fee), we're creating a positive and rewarding place for you to interact online.
Our Mission
Yoursphere.com is a creative outlet by, about and for youth.
Our mission is to use cutting edge technology to provide a safe haven and open forum exclusively for youth ages 9 to 18 where individuality and self-expression are encouraged and rewarded. We provide a fun, smart and creative environment, that delivers positive experiences and values.
Yourshere.com is a premium youth-focused social networking brand. We are committed to fostering all varieties of aspirations, unique educational opportunities, and responsible citizenship through supportive peer-to-peer social circles, scholarship programs, and charitable donations. Yoursphere.com engages our members and helps to protect from unwanted and inappropriate entities and content, while providing continual education to both youth and parents/guardians about online safety.
Yoursphere Team
Mary Kay Hoal
Founder, President, COO
A proud wife and mother of five (ranging in age from 4-17 years old), Mary Kay faces the same challenges every parent does: keep her children safe; raise them to be good, values-based, happy and well balanced people; and provide them with the tools and support to create their future.
While she readily admits that she didn't originally get the "whole online social networking phenomenon", she quickly recognized that it is here to stay, an important facet of youth communication, and could be refashioned into a positive force. "Embrace it to change it" is her philosophy. After discovering the sad state of affairs for youth on these sites included seemingly endless inappropriate content and entities, her mission became clear: raise the bar. She knew she could get things done the right way for youth! Developing an environment that is meaningful and authentically reflective of them, and that their parents would embrace for being as safe as humanly and technically possible. This was not just a smart business move for Mary Kay, but a necessity as a mother and responsible human being.
"Risk it all, jump out of my comfort zone" she thought and leverage her extensive, $100M corporate entrepreneurial experience as an out-of-the-box media strategist, advertising, marketing and publishing VP formerly with CMP Media LLC. Mary Kay also attended California State University Sacramento and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and a minor in Journalism from Eastern Washington University.
Conceived and founded by Mary Kay, Yoursphere is a positive and safe peer-to-peer environment. Yoursphere is an outlet for youth to be themselves, interact socially, and explore their given talents, passions and interests. What, may you ask, is the adults place in the Yoursphere world? Mary Kay believes a parent/guardian's obligation is take a very brief amount of their time to help ensure this safe place for their kids by providing their consent and identity verification. While Yoursphere's place is not only to supply an environment where youth are comfortable to be themselves, but to also provide tools and support (such as the Create Your Future educational fund) for them to pursue their dreams.
Leland "Lee" Rees
CEO-CFO
Lee was most recently the co-founder, Director, Executive-Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of MaxPreps.com, an internet site dedicated to the enhancement, honor and celebration of high school student athletes, their coaches, parents and fans. MaxPreps.com is commonly referred to as "America's source for high school sports," and was purchased by CBS in 2007 and is now a part of CBS Sports.
His life hadn't been quite as exciting as it has become since he met, and partnered up with Mary Kay. An avid tennis player, Lee and his wife Kathy, much prefer calm days sailing around the San Francisco Bay on their 42 foot sailboat or spending time at Lake Tahoe. But Lee loves a challenge and cares about making the world a better place for youth. Plus, we always get him to crack a smile and that's not something easily accomplished by anyone else.
After Lee began his business career in the accounting profession in both public accounting and private corporate accounting he followed those many long (and exciting years!!) in corporate banking with the Farm Credit System and several large money center banks including Wells Fargo Bank's Corporate Banking Division. Lee was also a founder of Ventura County National Bank, subsequently sold to City National Bank. After his banking career he spent over a decade managing the contracts of both the DOD and commercial business entities of Aerojet General, a wholly owned subsidiary of GenCorp. Lee graduated from the University of Washington (Seattle) with a degree in Accounting after which he served in the U.S. Army as an officer and paratrooper. Lee holds a Master of Arts in Business and Finance from Governors State University in Illinois, and has been an adjunct professor of Finance at numerous universities.
Chad Jones
Director of Technology
Chad is Yourspheres' Technology Hercules. Along with a mighty team, he's here to rule out the Creepers with his deft knowledge, painful key strokes, and venomous tracking capabilities. Chad is deeply immersed in tech knowledge and experience at the highest level. Chad came to us from the Department of Justice (DOJ) where he was a member of the Violent Criminal Information Network (VCIN) team -- providing database tracking of sex offenders for law enforcement and such applications as the Megan's Law website.
Outside of working at Yoursphere, Chad's true joy is to share his unmatched-pepper-eating-threshold capability (a capability which astounds most anyone he meets) and to spend time with his beautiful wife. When not doing either of those, he likes to spend time re-living his youthful days spent growing up in Alaska then living in Israel, Jordan, China and India. He sometimes refers to his own life as, "one of the most interesting I've ever heard of."
Chad spends endless hours in front of the screen, exploring new technology and perfecting the art of keeping kids safe and creepers out. With the constant evolution of software and hardware, Chad is tireless in his thorough analysis of every option, every possibility and in creating one of the safest possible online communities - Yoursphere.
NetIDme, (www.NetIDme.net)
The world's leader in online identity and verification. It's also a company founded, too, by a parent concerned about the safety of his children. They join Yoursphere as their strategic online identity and verification partner. With the inclusion of NetIDme's technology in Yoursphere's membership sign-up process, they are uniquely able to provide verifiable parental consent for each of the youth members, as well as verifying that the applying parent is not a registered sex offender.
Premise Marketing (www.premisemarketing.com)
The immersive marketing partner for brands targeting youth, Premise joins the Yoursphere team to lead brand management and marketing. They specialize in building brands through marketing programs that entertain the senses and have a positive impact on youth.
Caleb Gilbert
Lead Developer
Caleb is an all-around project Drupal ninja who has developed and implemented online projects for clients such as 3M, BestBuy, PeopleSoft, InforWorld, and more. An active blogger since 2002, Caleb served as webmaster for a Gubernatorial campaign during the 2003 California recall election. In 2005, while searching for a robust platform to use for a community site, he discovered Drupal. After experiencing Drupal's brilliance and flexibility firsthand he quickly decided to adapt a 100% Drupal workflow and hasn't looked back. These days he can be found delving into the various intricacies of Drupal themeing, production, maintenance, scalability, and development while listening to the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
Chris Shattuck
Creative Director
Hot in the pursuit of his ultimate dream of becoming a electronic pop star, Chris is continually sidetracked by a highly satisfying, secondary career of designing online experiences that make people feel good. He is a huge fan of usability and enjoys experiencing and creating tools that help us live more interesting lives, often to the chagrin of his family. If you're interested in keeping Chris busy - so he stops breaking things in an effort to make them 'better' - stick a good science fiction book in his back pocket or dangle a carrot in front of his face. Chris has been working diligently for the past four years as the owner of a web design and development firm, and is an excited (and slightly nervous) father-to-be.
Anne Easterling
Quality Control Manager
An advocate for using new technologies to build communities, Anne loves making websites interesting, fun and easy to use. At Yoursphere, she's the connection between the technical team and the users. Anne started her career with a journalism degree, then worked as a news reporter, teacher, communications director, non-profit manager and most recently publisher and web developer. Her list of "best days ever" includes jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, visiting all four Disney World theme parks in one day, and bringing her babies home. These days, she and her husband are plotting their escape to Florida now that their two children have (almost) left the nest.
Tracy Epperson
Global Manager, Customer Service
Communication has always been the clear path for Tracy. From her training in police dispatch communications, Tracy learned that customer service presented more interesting challenges - allowing her to solve problems and create unique solutions. She went on to lead customer service in a large corporation and direct statewide call centers, including establishing and managing two of the top call centers in the food service industry. Tracy lives in Sacramento with her husband, young son and admitted crazy dog. In addition to enjoying a diverse variety of personalities (an absolute pre-requisite of customer service), Tracy is an avid reader, music-phile and pop culture buff. As part of the Yoursphere team Tracy combines her passion for service and technology with her belief that "the foundation of all good companies is the relationships you build with your customers."
Leroy Pyle
Law Enforcement Facilitator
Leroy is a retired law enforcement officer with more than 30 years of service, including stints with the San Jose PD as well as the Solano County Drug Abuse Bureau. After retiring from active duty, Leroy started his own business, training civilians in personal protection techniques. Leroy has significant experience and understanding of the needs for citizens to protect themselves and their family.
Matt Strauss
Law Enforcement Facilitator
Matt worked as a special agent for the United States Secret Service for eight years; his assignments included working at the White House, numerous traveling assignments, and at the Washington Field Office. Matt was trained by the Secret Service as an electronic crimes special agent, where he investigated computer crimes, access device fraud, and performed forensic analysis of computers. For the past three years, Matt has worked as a special investigator for the FBI and also teaches psychology at Montgomery College. In whatever free time he has left after investigating and teaching, Matt enjoys reading about technology, philosophy, and human social behavior. He and his fiancée love to travel (next stop: the Grand Canyon!) and you will often find him in the local bookstore. Matt is obsessed with electronic gadgets, radios, and computers.
Editorial Team
Nate Carter
Nate is a creative writer and Student of Journalism and English at San Jose State University with an emphasis in photojournalism and is now one of Yoursphere's online media editors. Raised in San Jose, he began his interest with words and music at an early age. In his spare time he writes, plays guitar and piano, produces tasty musical beats for interested eardrums, and photographs large events to add to his photo blog. He currently resides in San Diego with his best friend and loving Macbook.
John Gamboa
John was born in San Diego, but raised in a suburb outside of Sacramento in Northern California. John is currently a student at San Diego State University where he loves to endure the stress of double-majoring in journalism and geography. In his free time, John likes to watch movies, do nerdy things, play on his Wii, and DJ at his university's radio station. When it comes to venturing into the outside world, John goes backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, travels wherever a cheap plane ticket will take him and constantly fights gravity.
Richelle Hawley
Richelle is a recent graduate of San Diego State University with a BA in Communications with an emphasis in Advertising. Born and raised in San Diego, she loves the yearly average temperature of 75 degrees and sports her rainbows 365 days/year (including the five days of rainfall). During her free time she loves to read (memoirs and trashy magazines), write, chase squirrels at Balboa Park, and experiment with self-tanners. And yes, her hair is naturally curly.
Brittany Hook
Born and raised in sunny San Diego, California, Brittany has just graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in English and a minor in art. On her free time she loves to read, write, listen to music, paint, go to the beach, and hang out with friends and family. Traveling as much as possible is also high on her list of loves. Some of her favorite adventures thus far include Australia, Costa Rica, Europe, and Mexico.