MEET

JEAN-MARC MWEMA

For more than half my life, my world has revolved around basketball.

Around everything behind it. The discipline. The mindset. The environment. Learning to deal with pressure. Realising that how you live off the court matters just as much as what you do on it.

Throughout my career I have always felt that real impact goes beyond statistics or talent alone. I wasn’t always the best shooter or the most spectacular player on the court. But I always tried to be someone who brought energy, took people along and had a positive impact on the team. And I think that is what coaches often appreciated most in me.

Basketball taught me how much influence habits, discipline, self-confidence and environment have on how someone grows. How sleep, nutrition, recovery, focus and mindset ultimately help shape who you become, as an athlete and as a person.

For a long time I have had the urge to do something with what I learned. The things that shaped me, the habits, the mindset, the lessons from the court: I want to share them with today’s young people. Inspire them. Give them the head start I would have wanted myself.

That desire was always there. [IMPACT] is where I finally make it real.

Because that is what I want to do with everything I have built. Not just perform, but leave something behind. Through [IMPACT], through our own programmes, through a platform that reaches further than one camp or one season. Building a movement that truly gives today’s young people something.

That is real impact to me.

MIRTE RENS

In my daily life I create brands, concepts and ideas from strategy, vision and feeling. I love building something from scratch and thinking about how it can be strong as a business while also creating real value.

I am also fascinated by how young people think, feel and discover the world. My own thought process as a teenager never left me, and somewhere I always knew I would do something with it. That became a training as a youth coach, and today, alongside my work as a concept designer, I guide student entrepreneurs through their first steps in entrepreneurship.

I do that work with so much passion and dedication. Seeing young people blossom and turn their ideas into something tangible. But I also see what they carry: insecurity, pressure, choice stress, a lack of self-confidence. The feeling that they should already know everything, while they are still in the middle of discovering who they are. That made me realise something essential.

The right guidance, environment and tools are enormously powerful. Building self-confidence, learning who you are and what you stand for, understanding how sleep, food, energy and environment affect you, learning to deal with pressure and being kind to yourself. Those are the foundations. And yet we teach young people far too little about them.

With [IMPACT] I want to change that.

For me, [IMPACT] is the translation of everything I already do, but bigger, more accessible and with a wider reach. A place where young people come into contact with those foundations in a positive way. Where they discover who they are, what they need to grow and how they can move towards it with confidence.

Within [IMPACT], my focus is on the vision, the strategy, the brand and building out the concept. I focus on valuable partnerships, and no choice is left to chance. That is where I get the most energy from.

And my goal? To create an environment where young people feel seen, can grow and get tools they will benefit from for the rest of their lives.