Kimberly de Braconier
She is also the mother of three children.
Questions of cultural integration, pedagogy, and holistic education, including sports, art, and science, have always been a passion for her.
After studying agricultural engineering (LLN, Belgium) and attending art school in London (Central Saint Martins), her career started in the field of online educational publishing. She first worked as a scientific illustrator in the Education Department at Dorling Kindersley Publishing. And then went on to creating animations for some of the very first online educational games at Premium TV (NTL), helping shape their early digital learning content.
Settled in Zurich, she fully embraced entrepreneurial life. As a designer in various sectors, creating logos, visual identities, and websites. And also illustrating and painting personal projects, including portraits and book illustrations for both adults and children.
In 2019, she founded B&MA GmbH, born from Body & Mind Academy. The company remains deeply family‑oriented and offers services designed to meet the needs of children and their parents. B&MA is a dynamic platform that, thanks to the skills and experience of its team, organizes numerous playful and artistic workshops that allow children to explore, experiment, and above all, have fun. The offer includes year‑round or camp‑based tennis, skiing, breakdance, hands‑on activities, arts, construction, and nature‑ and science‑based discovery activities, always rooted locally or developed with local partners.
Whether she is designing a new brand identity or organizing sports activities for children, she always brings curiosity, experience, and heart to everything she undertakes.
Maria, a mother of two living in Dübendorf is the founder of Body and Mind Academy. After a decade working with students and researchers at university level, Maria wanted to focus on future researchers and students. Body and Mind Academy is based on the principle that academic learning benefits from sports and games.
Seeing how difficult it was for international parents in Zurich to find suitable activities and manage children's schedules and journeys, Maria decided in 2015 to offer "all-inclusive" activities for children during holidays. She later added semester courses with school pick up. Most of the activities are in German (Hochdeutsch) and take a step towards linguistic integration in Switzerland. For this project called Localpatriates, Maria won the "Fellowship Children & Youth" innovation award from the Mercator Switzerland Foundation and the Impact Hub Zurich
Maria Youssefzadeh