Meet Our Team
General Manager
James Malburg
James joined the Child1st team in the role of General Manager, with oversight of finance, budget, strategic outreach, and other operations. James’ background is in Social Work, and he comes to us from a career as a Probation Officer. He provides support to each Child1st team member and enthusiastically empowers our team to reach their goal of helping children across the globe learn to read!
James holds a BSW from Kuyper College where he studied Social Work and Theology. He is a Michigan native and enjoys spending time with his family exploring new areas of the state. James is the father of two young boys and in his spare time he can be found golfing or spending time with his family.
Operations Manager
Therese
Therese brings with her a passion for helping and supporting those who teach children. She has homeschooled three children herself, bringing them success through creating lessons tailored to their learning needs, so she is admirably equipped to help those who are also desiring educational solutions for their children. Therese brings her experience with managing personnel and creating systems that support the smooth running of an organization.
Therese holds a Bachelor of Organizational Management from Cornerstone University, which dovetails nicely with her natural gifts in the areas of systems and management.
In her free time, she loves spending time with family, traveling, outdoor activities, and seeking out adventure!
Graphic Design / Illustration
Ryan Bartz
Illustrations are a critical part of assisting young learners to grasp new ideas, and those pictures don’t draw themselves! From pictures to book layout, Ryan makes sure to keep things cohesive, comprehensible, and fun for kids.
As a graphic designer, he understands how people read books. Fonts, margins, stock, profile, styles, grids, leading, kerning, hierarchy, and branding are all components of the books we read, so it is important to design books in a way that a child can learn.
Ryan is a graduate from Taylor University where he studied graphic design.
When he isn’t drawing, he enjoys gardening, running, dabbling in software, or enjoying a good movie.
Sales & Marketing Intern
Nick
Nick is the Sales & Marketing Intern for Child1st, brought in to help learn and develop new sales strategies to promote products, create and grow relationships with clients, increase outreach, and find new ways to service current or future clients. He is a natural-born learner with a deep desire to gain new knowledge and skills.
He prefers to learn hands-on through kinesthetic or visual methods, this gives him an innate understanding of unique learning styles and he has a passion for making sure people reach their potential.
Nick is currently pursuing a degree in Sports Management from Calvin University and enjoys activities such as building things, cars, hiking, nature, and playing sports in his free time.
Founder, Product Designer
Sarah K Major
Sarah is the creative brainchild of the company. She grew up barefoot (except on Sundays) in the balmy sun-drenched expanse of Honduras. She adores the ocean, scanning the dirt for new buds in spring and solving problems of all kinds.
Sarah is now retired and enjoys spending lazy Saturday mornings engaged in long conversation and relaxing over a good cup of coffee.
Her other hobbies include reading, and creating super fun short stories that provide solutions to tedious run-of-the-mill ideas. Sarah is a total people person and loves to show her hospitality by cooking great food and feeding people until they groan.
Her absolute belief in every child’s ability to learn, and her passion to empower the child by supporting his/her own unique giftedness have fueled her life’s work and provided a new pathway for children to succeed academically.
During her tenure as a Title 1 program designer/director, Sarah was the recipient of The Outstanding Parent Satisfaction award and The Major Academic Program Improvement awards.
