Atlanta – October 14, 2026 -- Bright Crowns, a daily wellness practice built specifically for Black children, is now available on the Apple App Store with a free seven-day trial. Families who join by Dec. 31 lock in a Founding Family rate of $69.99 for the first year, and one subscription covers every child in the home.
A five-minute morning routine follows a Breathe, Belong, Become arc
Each session combines breathing, affirmations and examples of inspiring Black figures, past and present. The goal is for a child to settle, remember who they are and where they come from, and leave the house grounded in their own worth.
The app carries kids from morning to bedtime
Bright Crowns is not limited to mornings. It offers confidence boosts before a test or a game, support when a big feeling rises, and sleep stories from the African diaspora at night. The week closes with a reflection that a parent reads aloud to their child.
Children earn crowns drawn from real African kingdoms, which the company describes as an inheritance rather than a reward.
Two Atlanta parents built it after finding only generic wellness apps
Husband-and-wife team David and Tia Harley, Atlanta parents of two young children, created the app for their own kids. They searched a $2.1 trillion wellness industry and found only generic apps that never felt like home and asked a Black child to set part of themselves aside to belong.
David is an award-winning creative director who has led multicultural brand campaigns. Tia led business development and partnerships at Google after a marketing career at AT&T. The couple used Bright Crowns with their children every morning for more than a year before sharing it with other families. They report their children recovered faster from tough moments, were more willing to try hard things and became more engaged at school, with improved grades.
The approach cites three research findings
The company points to a landmark study in the journal Science, which found that a brief, culturally grounded practice measurably narrowed the racial achievement gap for Black students without any change to the school itself. It also cites the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, which identified ethnic-racial identity as a key protective factor for Black youth mental health. A meta-analysis of 76 mindfulness programs for young people found significant improvements in stress, attention, emotional regulation and academic engagement.
"We can't always lighten the load our children carry," said co-founder and CEO Tia Harley, "but we can help make them strong enough to carry it."