OUR JOURNEY
Foundational Value
We Are All Connected
Awe helps children realize they are part of something larger than themselves, beginning a journey toward discovering their potential and becoming thoughtful global citizens.
Core Values
Awe is a Superpower
Awe fuels curiosity, creativity, and a lifelong love of learning. It helps children see the world differently, ask bigger questions, and engage more deeply with life. Global Galactics positions awe not as a fleeting emotion, but as a developmental force that expands perspectives and inspires exploration.
Adventuring Together
Global Galactics encourages children to "Look Up, Look Around, and Look Within" through shared exploration, storytelling, and discovery. Adventures are designed to be experienced with family, friends, and communities—emphasizing connection and participation rather than passive consumption.
Part of Something Bigger
The brand helps children recognize that they are connected to a larger world, larger universe, and larger community. Through awe experiences, kids develop empathy, purpose, global citizenship, and an understanding that their actions matter.
Grounded Dreamers
Global Galactics encourages children to dream boldly while developing the confidence, resilience, leadership, and self-awareness needed to make those dreams meaningful. It's the balance of imagination and capability—wonder paired with action.
Brand Promise
We help children use awe to become curious, confident, connected explorers of the world and themselves.
At Global Galactics, we believe in the power of awe to shape the minds and hearts of children.
The inspiration for our mission began with the globetrotting adventures of co-founders Timothy and Karinna Karsten and their Jack Russell, Sparky. For 19 years, they travelled and explored twenty-two countries and every corner of the United States. Along the way, Timothy brought Sparky into Teach for America classrooms in Los Angeles, and the duo visited schools and communities in India, Thailand, and beyond.
These experiences revealed something powerful: while children are naturally curious, many lack the tools to discover the world around them and understand themselves in it.
What they saw in those classrooms has been confirmed by two decades of research in developmental psychology — awe is not incidental to childhood development. It is central to it. That realization became the spark for Global Galactics, a place where awe, wonder, and curiosity guide every story, every activity, and every adventure. And Sparky — the dog who had wandered through more of the world than most adults ever see — became the inspiration for SparkStar.
Thank you for joining us on this journey!
– Timothy & Karinna Karsten
What We Do Now
Today, Timothy and Karinna lead a team of educators, researchers, writers, and creators working on questions that sit at the centre of modern childhood: what does a child need to encounter in order to feel genuinely curious about the world? What are parents and educators actually up against — the distraction, the overwhelm, the shrinking space for unstructured exploration? And what is technology doing to childhood attention and wonder — and how do we use it differently?
The answer that keeps emerging, supported by that same body of research, is awe. Not as a feeling — as a measurable developmental input that drives curiosity, emotional resilience, learning, and connection. Every story, song, mission, and adventure in the SparkStar world is built with that research at its centre. Not adapted from something else and retrofitted with educational language — designed from the beginning around what children actually need.
At Global Galactics, we're building a world where AWE is intentional, not accidental. Global Galactics exists to counter distraction by reigniting curiosity, attention, and wonder in childhood. Through character-driven storytelling and science-rooted exploration, we bridge digital experiences to real-world action.