Carlo Kriekels completed two law degrees, mastered five languages, and traveled extensively. On one of his trips, a motorbike tour of South America , his life was dramatically changed when he began volunteering at a Columbian shelter for abandoned children and street youth. Upon returning home, he began a quest to find deeper meaning in his life and he discovered his passion-providing emotional intelligence/leadership training workshops. After intensive training, he worked with an international training institute to facilitate expensive training workshops for business leaders from around the world. In 2001, he came full circle and combined his interest in youth with the skills learned in the for-profit world and created the nonprofit YESS Institute to bring emotional intelligence/leadership training to nonprofit agencies and at-risk youth.

The YESS Institute offers emotional intelligence/leadership trainings for staff at nonprofit agencies as well training/peer-mentoring programs for youth. In addition, we are in the process of formalizing our YESS Emotional Intelligence curriculum. We are proud of our accomplishments:

• Since 2001, we have offered youth training/peer-mentoring programs in ten Denver-metro schools, provided training workshops to staff at over 65 local nonprofits and presented at regional and national conferences related to youth development.
• We are one of 16 local agencies currently partnering in the Youth Mentoring Collaborative, funded in part by the Denver Department of Health and Human Services.