Future Entrepreneurs
Michael Bradley and George Gonzalez of Oakland are like so many entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. They talk excitedly and effusively about their new business. They spend odd hours night and day working on their business plan. They wear T-shirts with the company logo on it.
But unlike most entrepreneurs, Bradley and Gonzalez are 17-year-old inner city youths for whom the prospect of running their own business, indeed the prospect of determining their own destinies, seemed remote just a few years ago.
They are students of a business entrepreneurship class taught at McClymonds High School provided by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship.
“Whenever I come to this class, I feel comfortable. It helps me think more efficiently and get a better understanding of business,” said Gonzalez, whose intentions are to go to college and then follow in his single mother’s footsteps and start his own business. “It helps us get a better understanding of how economics works, how to run a business and manage money,” Gonzalez said.
Their business “Vans over Money,” or VOM, is a skateboard club that encourages membership and is gearing up to sell merchandise.
James Gray, principal of the BEST community high school within McClymonds, said the foundation’s program does more for the students than steer them toward business.
“We see kids become more interested in math and core curriculum subjects when they understand entrepreneurship and what they need to go into business. They realize they have to be math literate to understand supply and demand and margin analysis.”
Photo by D. Ross Cameron.
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