About YMI
Young Minds Inspired is the nation’s leading provider of free educational outreach programs for learners of all ages.
Our team launched the first company dedicated to educational outreach in 1978, and since then we have created more than 3,000 programs for schools, daycare centers, youth programs, sports programs, summer camps, public libraries, community centers, senior centers, and religious institutions.
YMI distributes its programs free of charge to members of the YMI Educator Network, which includes more than 2 million teachers at every public, private, and parochial school in the United States. Working with our local partner India Market Entry (IME), we are now creating original programs for India.
Every YMI program is developed by curriculum experts and reviewed by members of our Educator Advisory Board, a blue-ribbon panel of active teachers who assure that our programs align with academic standards and meet practical classroom needs.
Our goal at Young Minds Inspired is to help educators create a dynamic learning experience in the classroom, with high-quality, up-to-date, interactive educational resources designed to inspire young minds.
Meet the YMI Management Team
Dr. Dominic Kinsley, managing partner and Editor in Chief, has specialized in educational outreach for more than 25 years. Before joining YMI, Dr. Kinsley supervised curriculum development at Lifetime Learning Systems, Weekly Reader, and LearningWorks, where he created award-winning programs for the National PTA, the Governors Highway Safety Association, the Produce for Better Health Foundation, PLATO Learning, and for the Academy Award-winning film, Schindler’s List. He was also co-recipient of an American History and Civics Initiative grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the website he created for the Ken Burns PBS documentary The West was among the Top 100 Humanities Sites selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Kinsley has appeared as a spokesperson and panelist on national television and at symposia and educator conferences across the country. At the start of his career, he was a member of the English Department faculty and lecturer on Shakespeare at Yale University, where he graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and received his PhD degree.
Donald J. Lay, managing partner, is responsible for establishing the corporate partnerships that make YMI programs possible. Donald has more than 25 years of experience in educational outreach, having served as President of Lifetime Learning Systems, Executive Vice President at Weekly Reader, and Managing Partner at LearningWorks. In that time, he has been a driving force behind the growth of educational outreach into a dependable source of free curricular materials for teachers who must meet ever higher demands with ever decreasing budgets. Through his efforts, companies like Samsung, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Warner Bros., Walt Disney Pictures, and Paramount have come to recognize educational outreach as a corporate responsibility and an opportunity to put their unique resources and expertise to good use in the classroom.
What Is Educational Outreach?
All YMI programs are produced in partnership with corporations, associations, and other organizations who seek to provide educators with information and resources that will benefit young people and their families.
YMI represents the interests of educators in these partnerships. Aided by the members of our Educator Advisory Board, we develop programs that are independently researched, balanced in their point of view, and appropriate for the classroom. We realize, and remind our partners, that educators must welcome our programs in order for them to succeed, and that means our work must meet the most rigorous academic standards of excellence.
As pioneers in educational outreach, we fully understand the responsibilities of our role. We always identify clearly the sponsors who make our programs possible, and we always survey the teachers who receive our programs to assure ourselves that we have provided them with a valuable educational asset. We hope that you too will let us know your opinion of the resources we offer on this website and will share your experience using them. We welcome such feedback, and rely on it to continue producing educational outreach programs that make a real difference in the classroom.