Yanjaa

Yanjaa was born in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to a Buryat-Mongolian mother and a Khalkha-Mongolian father. She grew up in Mongolia, Stockholm, Tokyo and attended boarding school in Kenya at the Swedish School of Nairobi where she studied Swahili and philosophy.[5][10] Yanjaa graduated from Stockholm Business School with a degree in Business and Economics, where she was an active member of the student council marketing team.[11] She also attended the University of Uppsala to study art history during this time.

Yanjaa was originally inspired to compete in memory after reading Moonwalking with Einstein by American author and former US memory champion Joshua Foer.[4][5] She entered her first memory competition two months after reading it, receiving the newcomer award and placing first in the discipline names and faces at a German Open Memory competition in Munich, Germany.[12][13] She has since medalled in a number of competitions as well as broken numerous memory records (see Records). In 2015 Yanjaa was invited as one of the top 200 Leaders of Tomorrow at the 46th St. Gallen Symposium in St. Gallen, Switzerland for her achievements in memory sports at a young age.[14]

In 2015 Yanjaa starred in the Swedish documentary Masterminds, following the moments leading up to the Swedish Memory Championships 2014 where she placed second overall.[15] Yanjaa was featured in the 2016 documentary How to Remember Everything, which covered the 2014 World Memory Championships in Haikou, China.[16] Yanjaa was invited to speak at Investor AB's 100th anniversary, where she demonstrated recall of 10 of the 100 names and faces she had to memorize.[17] She has also been interviewed and featured for memory training and language learning on Today, The Guardian, Wired as well as numerous national media publications in Sweden, China and Mongolia.[18][19][6][20]

Yanjaa was a contestant on the final season of the Chinese television program The Brain in 2017, defeating her opponent Yu Yipei by memorizing more synthesized images winning on accuracy over speed.[21][22][23][24][25] She was a contestant on the 2017 comeback season of the talent show Talang, the Swedish version of Got Talent.[19] In the audition round, Yanjaa received the golden buzzer from judge Alexander Bard and immediately advanced to the semi-finals by memorizing twenty names and faces in 90 seconds. After a successful semi-finals round in which she memorized 30 digits in 30 seconds, she advanced to the finals where she ended up in fifth place.[26]

In September 2017 Yanjaa was featured as the "IKEA Human Catalogue 2018", having memorized the entire catalogue in just a week before the launch of the new catalogue. The campaign was a success landing press conferences in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore and multiple appearances on the Steve Harvey show and other talk shows.[27][28][29] In May 2018, the campaign was voted as people's voice and the official jury's Webby Award for best social media ad campaign.[30] In 2017, she began production for a documentary called Memory Games with Emmy Award-winning director Janet Tobias.[31][32][33] The documentary premiered in New York in November 2018. An additional screening was scheduled because the premiere sold out. Memory Games was bought by Netflix and launched on June 19, 2019.[34] Yanjaa was featured in her second Netflix project on September 11, 2019. The Mind, Explained is a limited series narrated by Emma Stone in collaboration with Vox Media.[35]

As of September 11, 2018, Yanjaa holds 3 world records, 6 national records and ranks 7th in the world as a memory athlete.[39][40][41]

• World Memory Championships
• List of Swedish sportspeople
• Grand Master of Memory
• Memory sport
• Mnemonist
• Polyglot

• Official website