What a great team!
Mindy Myers is the founder of Sound Advice and creator of all products. She holds a master’s degree in Education with a focus in Child Development and is currently completing her doctorate in Educational Systems Design. Mindy’s professional experience gives her expertise in education, child development, public relations, marketing, and proficiency as a writer.
With expertise in communications and public relations, Berit Rabinovitz is Sound Advice’s Director of Marketing.
With experience in finance and management, Richard Myers oversees Sound Advice’s business and finances.
Yon Hardisty and Nicholas Murphy, principles of Monkey Byte Multi-Media, are software development partners with Sound Advice.
Chris Pavia, principle at Educational Card Games, is a board game partner.
About NoteNiks
How did this all begin?
Mindy Myers, the founder and CEO of Sound Advice, Inc., makers of NoteNiks, created NoteNiks from her own personal experience. Her then 11-year-old son, Jacob, was kindly referred to at school as “challenging.” It was not infrequent that Mindy received notes from school about Jacob’s acting-out behavior and inattention. Mindy’s educational background in child development informed her that children do better academically and even behave better when they feel their parents’ presence at school. So Mindy started writing notes and placing them in Jacob’s lunchbox daily. Within a month, there was a shift in Jacob’s behavior. He started relating more to the teacher and to his peers, and even started participating in class. The notes even opened up channels of communication around the evening dinner table. Thus the first NoteNiks product was born: LunchBox NoteNiks.
A little research goes a long way!
Mindy conducted focus groups with parents and kids in Minneapolis and San Francisco. Parents corroborated Mindy’s hunch that children make monumental leaps when the worlds of home and school are blended.
In conducting focus groups with children, Mindy learned that kids didn’t want notes with talking bunnies or kittens; they wanted notes with characters that looked and acted like themselves. She also learned that more than anything, kids love comics!
Armed with her hunches and focus group data, Mindy started producing NoteNiks. She conducted an international search and found a cartoonist with a good sense of humor and an eye for ethnic differences. The rest is history.
Who knew? LunchBox NoteNiks was just the beginning.
LunchBox NoteNiks soon paved the way for other NoteNiks products: Motivational NoteNiks in Spanish and English, NoteNiks postersNoteNiks for kids with ADD/ADHD, NoteNiks for kids with Asthma, Dental NoteNiks, Healthy Eating & Exercise NoteNiks comics, Roxy’s Eat Right Games, Healthy Eating & Exercise software, Menu Templates software, Respect Our Earth software, and medical support NoteNiks T-shirts.
Mindy lives in Oakland, California with her husband, Richard, and children, Talia and Jacob.
The Sound Advice Mission To provide children with comic messages that are both enjoyable to read and supportive in content; To provide educators, parents, dentists, doctors, and others with alternative vehicles to teach, inspire, and guide the children in their lives.
Social Value Each NoteNiks product was developed to enrich a child’s life, impart information and life lessons, and help children develop relationships with teachers, parents and professionals. All of Sound Advice’s products were developed by Mindy Myers who holds graduate degrees in child development and education, and whose professional experience has focused on bettering the lives of children.
