Nfte summer program

Startup Summer overview:. Students take part in a two-week boot camp and four-week launch phase, covering all business essentials to successfully launch a business. The TA will work closely with the Startup Summer Class of , which consists of 20 NFTE student entrepreneurs working to launch their businesses and make sales throughout the summer.

The summer will give you a fast paced and deep dive into the work of program management, workshop facilitation, and managing a team. Specific responsibilities include but are not limited to:. Around the time that he was being written about, like many other teenagers, Keegan also developed acne. At that point, many starstruck teenagers would have probably rushed to give their time for free. However, Keegan had learned through building his business plan that his time had a dollar amount attached to it and that the investment in his studio also had a cost that required reimbursement.

Fearlessly, he negotiated with Clearasil that filming in his store and taking more of his time would require a commensurate fee. Sure enough, he got a bigger paycheck!

Providing an entrepreneurial lens: How NFTE helped a young filmmaker obtain a prime spot at college and create her dream future.

Laura attended the Met School in Providence, and it was here where she identified and nurtured her passion for filmmaking. However, it was not until she took the NFTE components offered at the school in that she learned how to market those talents effectively and properly build a business around them.

I also learned how to ground my dream with a concrete business plan. She credits her public speaking abilities as byproduct of having taken the NFTE course elements and has found these skills to be of immense benefit. In , President LeBlanc brought Laura on a three-week international excursion to Istanbul, where she documented on film a summit on human ecology, after which they travelled to Kigali in Rwanda to film the first graduating class of the survivors Rwandan genocide.

Since , Laura has been earning living making promotional videos among other genres and, in doing so, has been tireless in honing her craft.

It was in Hartford that Olivia experienced the NFTE program, where she enrolled as part of her high school graduation requirements. Her teacher was passionate and was the sort of educator that NFTE celebrates and cherishes. Although she did not go on to enter or win the competition — like so many other NFTE students who may not, or qualify, or win at competition — what she gained was far more life-altering than winning any competition. As she found her entrepreneurial spirit ignited, so too was her passion and her innate talent as an artist.

Instead, they encouraged her to pursue only traditional careers paths such as becoming a doctor, a nurse or a lawyer. The other alternative was to go to work in the nail salon where her mother was working. Upon graduating high school, she dutifully started working in the nail salon as her parents suggested. It was a safe and stable place, and but it was stifling to her extraordinary talent. Fear may have kept her there, as it does for so many artists who suppress talent for security.

However, NFTE had already ignited the spark and confidence within her. Olivia realized her own self-worth and her value.

NFTE gave her the tools to turn that value into a valuable business, which she created around her art. That was 10 years ago. Today, though she is still only in her twenties, her art is featured in Hollywood movies. Her paintings sell for thousands of dollars plus. Her creative genius is sought by A-list celebrities. She has realized the dream of every artist, NFTE is delighted to have helped to ignite the entrepreneurial spirit that allowed such talent to grace the world.

There, she learned the basics of entrepreneurship, pitching, networking and created a unique balloon business. These balloons contained a natural rose inside them and were intended to be given as a romantic gift.

She named the company Rosealloon and, over time, she has expanded her product line to include other gifts inside a balloon. However, the lessons she learned from her NFTE class and from her business ultimately became worth even more to her than the experience of going to New York: she was able to help lift her family out of some very difficult circumstances instead. As a result, he was able to pay their rent and support the family through some very difficult times.

I got ongoing mentorship and guidance. Today, she continues to give back to NFTE, saying that her goal is to inspire other students who come from low-income communities to think with an entrepreneurial mindset and to aim high.

She believes everything is possible for those who are willing to work hard for their dreams. How NFTE gave one student the critical skills, the exposure and the publicity to become successful as an entrepreneur and intrapreneur, to change her life and to get her dream job.

At one point, she and her family were homeless. However, NFTE has shown Zoe that she can do anything that she sets her mind to, and that where you were born does not need to determine where you stay. Zoe discovered NFTE while in high school in Her business plan was formulated around her interests and talent, as she launched, Zoe Damacela Apparel. This gave Zoe a great deal of exposure for herself and for her business.

She was subsequently featured on both local and national news channels. She was also invited to White House by President Obama, after which publicity began surrounding her and her business spiked to even greater levels. She was featured on the cover of Seventeen Magazine and sales of her apparel and accessories boomed as a result. After high school, Zoe attended Northwestern University, where she continued to run her business throughout her college years.

Upon graduating, and keen to embark upon a new challenge, Zoe wanted to see what it would be like to apply her entrepreneurial grounding to be an intrapreneur within a larger organization.

It was there that she found a perfect place for her combination of creativity and intrapreneur capabilities to flourish. She rose quickly through the ranks and is now a Senior Design Manager. Then after several business competition rounds, it became a breeze. As the ambitious daughter of immigrant entrepreneurs, Kaina Lisibach has always known what it means to work hard. At age 13, Kaina used her passion for reading to start her own book review blog — teaching herself graphic design and coding as well as gaining a press pass to the biggest publishing conference in North America.

It was there that Kaina used her love for books to launch One Page Closer — a nonprofit organization that provided fully stocked bookcases to children and teens in low-income communities in the Miami region. Rather than be discouraged, she utilized her entrepreneurial mindset to persist. Instead she took the initiative to work 3 jobs every semester of college to pad her resume. She created her own opportunities through Kaly Media — a freelance marketing consulting business where she also taught herself how to create websites in order to have a steady income source.

This venture also enabled her to develop her portfolio, and network in the marketing and technology field. All of the hard work, initiative, and creativity paid off. After years of networking and skill-building, Kaina recently accepted an Associate Product Marketing Manager internship at Google. I was able to see firsthand how entrepreneurship helped elevate my family as they tried to rebuild their lives in a new country, which had a profound impact on me and my future goals. The early exposure to what I would later learn was an entrepreneurial mindset, allowed me to develop the ambitious work ethic that drives me today.

Rodney lost his home and a sibling in a fire, entering the foster system at the age of 5. His parents had struggled with drug abuse and his family members had been in and out of prison multiple times. Rodney felt trapped, both by his circumstances and by the system.

That is until he took his first NFTE class. With renewed energy and confidence, he applied himself to his studies and graduated from high school, earning himself a provisional acceptance to Morehouse College and using his NFTE competition winnings to pay for his first year. At dinner that night, when the guests at his table asked him what he was doing, he mentioned that he was trying to afford the next 3 years of college.

By the time dinner had ended, one of the donors at the table had offered to cover those entire college expenses, provided he maintain a good GPA. NFTE shows success can happen no matter what: Swapping a Bizcamp competition win for a future multimillion dollar business at age of just 13! But what she won was even more valuable: confidence in her ability to start a new enterprise. Jasmine also has a passion for technology. She studied engineering in college and graduate school.

Fashion talent meets the NFTE business experience to propel a young student to media fame and entrepreneurship awards. Shami was inspired to pursue fashion in when her father brought her local fabrics as a gift from his recent trip to Uganda. The fashion line, Shami Oshun , was soon born. The beautiful fabric sparked a love of fashion and design that has brought us the savvy entrepreneur we know today.

Real momentum came for Shami when she deployed a new marketing strategy on social media. She decided to make her own prom dress while posting the entire process on Twitter. The story went viral with thousands of views resulting in articles on Buzzfeed , Huffington Post , and Teen Vogue. How NFTE re-ignited a passion for learning, built self-confidence and unleashed ambition in a young entrepreneur.

This left her with a lot of free time but no direction. N FTE taught her how to think creatively and solve real problems for herself and her community. Kelsey always had an issue fitting her long braids into a traditional shower cap. One day, she decided to use a pair of leggings to protect her hair in the shower. It was then that she realized that she had stumbled upon an idea that might benefit a great many people, and Kinky Kaps, was born.

Kelsey is moved by the community of support she has discovered through her NFTE journey. It made me hopeful for the future. Mike Kacsmar brings 28 years of experience serving a variety of high-growth domestic and international companies, both public and private, at various stages of development.

His clients have typically been backed by large private equity investors and have successfully navigated through mergers, acquisitions and both private and public equity and debt offerings. The EOY Program recognizes achievements and contributions of the best high-growth entrepreneurs in the world. She oversees human resources, and various bank-wide initiatives. He is a member of the Management Committee. He was based in Europe from to , first as regional manager of the Equities Division in Frankfurt, then as general manager of the Goldman Sachs Bank in Zurich before moving to London in a European-wide capacity.

Companies that apply must be at least at prototype stage and include a team member who is a USC student, alumna or alumnus, faculty member, or staff member from any USC school. The initiative takes founders from feasibility and development work on to customers, helping them learn how to devise a tested business model, get distribution, build a team, bootstrap, and prepare to raise investment.

The incubator, which has worked with over companies so far, also offers access to supporting resources such as legal and financial assistance without taking any fee or equity in the business.

It has supported a broad mix of startups, ranging from machine learning, robotics, virtual reality, software as a service known as SaaS, and industrial equipment, to consumer products, apparel, and food and beverage. Participating companies have been acquired, raised money, run successful Kickstarter campaigns, received grants from the National Science Foundation, and shipped product to customers.