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Meet The Team
Margaret Barnes
Treasurer
Maggie Barnes is a retired U.S. Army Major with more than 22 years of professional experience in strategic planning, operations, financial management, and customer-facing roles. She has served as a Senior Business Operations Specialist and Deputy Program Manager for Department of Defense programs, overseeing large-scale organizational transitions, workforce alignment, and multi-million-dollar construction budgets. She is highly skilled in managing teams, vendor relationships, and compliance functions, and has a proven record of delivering operational efficiency and project success.
Marisa Winegar
Secretary
Marisa Winegar has taught music and drama to students of all ages since 1990. She holds a BA in Music from APSU and an MM from UNCG. She has developed and implemented programs for community theater orgs, community colleges, and her former business, Bravo Studios. She especially enjoys encouraging creative thinking through improvisation. Marisa has a special concern for children with disabilities, and she enjoyed working with the Penguin Project to provide them opportunities to be onstage. She spent 15 years as a church choir director and had the opportunity to conduct the MLK Jr Community Choir in Carbondale, IL on multiple occasions. While in Carbondale, she also created a program for the Eleven Days of Compassion initiative, which brought people from different backgrounds together to explore walking in each other's shoes through theater. She believes the arts are healing and hopes to help youth grow confident in their own voices.
Brooke Bonham-Jackson
Community Networking Specialist
Brooke is an Army veteran who served during multiple foreign wars. After her dedicated service, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Leadership from the University of Arkansas. She has worked as an eligibility specialist for DHHS, and she is well versed on the structure of grassroots community orgs and beyond. She is most passionate about networking and creating trustworthy partnerships that foster organizational growth.
Kevin Schraer
Recreational Programming Consultant
Kevin has decades of experience in social work and exploring recreational activities for underserved and at-risk populations. He holds a Master's Degree in Social Work from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. During his graduate studies, he implemented a street outreach program that provided a safe place for unsupervised youth in Cairo, IL to do homework and engage in fun, youth centered, activities. He also won the Thesis of the Year award for his dedicated research into the link between aggression levels and lack of recreational opportunities.
Adrienne Ruvalcaba
President and Founder
Adrienne is a fiction author with analytical flair and enthusiasm for taking complex creative projects from conception to fruition. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering with a concentration in Structural Analysis, but her educational journey also includes three years studying Child Psychology. She has hands-on, professional and volunteer, experience with youth from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. Since her time working as a clinical counselor in 2006, Adrienne has been passionate about social-emotional learning curriculums developed with youth-centered collaboration and feedback.
Our Story
Master Mindz takes a holistic and cognitive based approach to mentoring youth. We encourage them to take responsibility for their social-emotional learning as early in life as possible.
Resilience grows from identifying and facing challenges and continuing to make adjustments along the way in life.
Our cognitive approach asks them to identify their own challenges and to understand how those affect their emotional well-being. Once they gain better insight into themselves, we ask them to use the tools presented to come up with solutions that work for them.
This is not a one size fits all approach; rather, it is an approach that teaches the participants to tailor their own solutions to their particular needs. They select which tools to add to their tool kits; we simply supply a variety of tools and techniques to choose from.
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The main goal is a reduction in overall anxiety, depression, and aggression by presenting them with an analytical framework on how to challenge negative thought and behavioral patterns.
Our handouts are simple and meant to be used as brainstorming tools to get youth started on the path to cognitive awareness of emotional issues.
The Master Mindz path toward emotional wellness is as follows:
Step 1
Identify Emotional Challenges
This begins with honest self-reflection encouraged in week one.
Step 2
Analyze Root Causes
We use critical thinking turned inward in a neutral (non-judgmental) manner.
Step 3
Set Behavior Goals
Setting and striving toward goals encourages self-reliance.
Step 4
Create Better Habits
it takes roughly two months to make, or break, a habit. We show the youth that it CAN be done.
Step 5
Repair Self Image
We help them build the foundation for a lifelong healthy relationship with the Self.
Our Clients
We serve the youth who must face the challenges of tomorrow with courage, resilience, and hope.
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