CAREER DEVELOPMENTIN THE HIGH SCHOOL SETTING

2015

INTRODUCTION

Education changed my life. I’m a first generation college student with a passion for giving back.

1Judging Arkansas High School Startup Weekend was the most inspiring moment of my MBA.

2I am driven to help solve the skills gap that’s currently unaddressed in K-12 education.

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MISSION & PREMISE WHY THIS STUDY?

INTRODUCTION

ERICA SWALLOW

RESEARCHER

ERIC WILSON

Led independent study research, interviews, and report production

CHRISTIAN CATALINI

CHIEF SHERPA

Provided continuous advice and expertise on

project scope and mission

ACADEMIC ADVISOR

Lent entrepreneurial lens to study as MIT

Sloan academic liaison

THE TEAM THAT MADE IT HAPPEN

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How are high school students currently engaged in career development?

Which businesses are most engaged in K-12 education? How and why?

What scalable opportunities exist to solve the skills gap between the classroom and workforce?

What should I do after MIT Sloan to have the greatest impact in education?

INTRODUCTION

METHODOLOGY KEY QUESTIONS

02 INTERVIEWS 03 SYNTHESIS01 INTERNET RESEARCH

INTRODUCTION

METHODOLOGY PROCESS FLOW

• Identified 150+ businesses, 40+ non-profits, 20+ grants, and dozens of influencers, resources and events focused on innovative education models

• Contacted and set up meetings with key change-makers

• Conducted 50+ phone and in-person interviews with leaders from relevant organizations

• Collected 60+ pages of interview insights

• Compiled findings into digestible and informative presentation

• Discussed programming ideas with local high school students

• Proposed next steps in final project meeting with Noble Impact team

How are high school students currently engaged

in career development?

01.

01. EXTRACURRICULARS

Clubs, extracurricular activities, and team sports are the most prevalent venue for career skills development in American high schools.(e.g. hackBCA, hackEDU, MIT Launch Clubs)

02. CLASS CONTENT

Limited content exists to engage students in career-focused learning, but these options range from individual courses to charter schools with new models.(e.g. EAST Initiative, Noble Impact, Big Picture Learning, Jacht Ad Lab, High Tech High)

03. COMPETITIONS

Students are increasingly competing in national skills-focused competitions to win internship opportunities.(e.g. AT&T Campus Brand Challenge, PepsiCo Meeting of the Minds, Technovation Challenge)

04. TRAINING/INTERNSHIPS

Because schools lack career exposure opportunities, non-profit and for-profit programs are popping up to fill the void.(e.g. YearUp, INROADS, LearnServe International, GEN*Z)

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

4 AREAS OF CURRENT ENGAGEMENT

CLUBS & TEAMS THE USUAL SUSPECTS

“Project work and community

involvement show us the type of skills that a student has learned, how they operate on a

team, the interests they have. We look for how students spend their free

time. If they weren't building, what were they doing? There's a lot you can learn from traveling around the world,

being an athlete, playing an instrument.”

- University recruiter, Tech firm

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

ZACHLATTA

Student-run organizations attempt to fill the skills and interest gap by offering extracurricular programming for students interested in developing career-related skills. Coding and entrepreneurship are budding areas. Two of the fastest growing organizations in the country — both less than a year old — are hackEDU and MIT Launch Clubs.

LAURIE STACH

hackEDU is a community of

programming clubs with 1,300 students at 38 high schools around the country.

The non-profit’s vision is “to bring a coding club where students can build things (and learn to build things) with other like-minded students to every high school in the

country.”

MIT Launch Clubs is is a nationwide

high school accelerator club network adapted

from MIT's Launch summer program.

In one year, summer alums

launched 30 clubs across the globe

and competed in a digital pitch

competition with winners pitching

at MIT.

EXTRACURRICULAR CLUBS FILL THE GAP

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CLASS OF 2016

(TESTED OUT IN 2014)

FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Summer Launch content is being developed for digital distribution, so club leaders need not memorize and deliver the full 4-week program themselves.

DIGITAL CONTENT

Students network via Facebook and Twitter groups to connect with fellow high school entrepreneurs across the world.

SOCIAL NETWORK

Clubs are launched by MIT Launch Summer alums, who’ve taken the 4-week high school entrepreneurship program.

ALUMNI LEADERS

Students are not limited by geographic location, but instead enter the Clubs pitch contest via YouTube for a chance to pitch at the MIT finals.

YOUTUBE CONTEST

MIT LAUNCH CLUBS EMPOWERS STUDENTS

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

hackBCA is a 24-hour long high school hackathon hosted at Bergen County Academies in New Jersey.

• 400 attendees from 5 states in first year; 500 attendees in second year

• 60% of attendees’ first hackathon

• 50% of attendees new to coding

• Launched and managed by high school students

HACKATHONS ARE EXPANDING TO HIGH SCHOOLS, TOO

LET’S HACK.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

EXTRACURRICULARS KEY TRAITS

01. STUDENT-RUN(+) Address needs students care about(+) Enable students to lead their peers(-) Unstable, due to student turnover(-) Lack funding and resources

02. OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM(+) Engage students in their interests(+) Break the “curriculum” mold(-) Inhibit students without means

03. ADAPTABLE

(+) Not regulated by state requirements(+) Customizable across schools(+) Distributed leadership enables scale(-) Tough to control for quality

Above: Paragould High School Electric Vehicle Team, national champions. AKA: Where I learned how to build, work on a team, and present.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

EXTRACURRICULAR OUTCOMES

AMY SORTOELIZABETH HS ’16 (NY)

CodeNow (high school coding workshop), Girls Who Code,

and NCWIT Aspirations alum. Founded hackEDU coding club at her school and is a freelance

designer/developer and COVERGIRL Girls Who Code

Ambassador.

JACOB JOHNSTONGREENBRIER HS + ASMSA ’15 (AR)

ARHSSW & MIT Launch Summer alum. Interning at MIT

Launch this summer before enrolling in Babson College. Currently CMO of summer

programs aggregator startup LandMe. Award winner at

Arkansas FBLA State Conference and Arkansas

Science and Engineering Fair.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Individual courses and entire schools are reimagining how students learn:

• Big Picture Learning’s apprenticeship and mentorship model teaches through hands-on work in the student’s passion area. (e.g. a for skateboarding enthusiast does a skate park engineering apprenticeship).

• High Tech High uses project-based learning to foster collaboration and deeper learning of key concepts.

• EAST Initiative empowers students to solve community problems using professional-grade technologies and software, contributing 1.5 million service hours annually in Arkansas alone.

REIMAGINING CLASS CONTENT

MODELING LIFE

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING KEY TRAITS

01. ENGAGING LEARNING STYLE(+) Many schools report increased attendance and retention(+) Students get better idea of “reason” behind learning(+) Community gets involved (mentorship, internship, shows)(-) Takes longer to let students “discover” the answer(-) Teachers aren’t typically trained for facilitation

02. TEACHER AS FACILITATOR(+) Projects “flip the classroom,” putting students in charge(+) Teachers can focus on student needs, not content delivery(-) Can be disorienting for newcomers

03. BETTER OUTCOMES

(+) PBL schools are graduating more students(+) PBL students are attending college at higher rates(-) Implementation and measurement can be intimidating

Above: EAST Initiative Summer Seminar for facilitators at Ouachita Baptist University.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

CLASS CONTENT OUTCOMES

SYDNEY BRAZILESTEM HS ’16 (AR)

Noble Impact alum. Founder of donut hole company The Hole

Thing and Assistant to the Director of the Little Rock Film

Festival. Active community member as as MC for Innovate to Educate and performer for Hot Springs Children's Dance

Theatre.

NIKHIL GOYALSYOSSET HS ’13 (NJ)

Author of “One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student’s Assessment

of School” and forthcoming “Schools On Trial: How

Freedom and Democracy Can Fix Our Educational

Malpractice.” Current freshman at Goddard College (VT),

working on 2nd book. Goddard is based on a student self-directed, mentored system.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

COMPETITIONS ARE A GROWING TREND

TECHNOVATION AT&T PEPSICO

AT&T CAMPUS BRAND CHALLENGE

Competition: Design an integrated marketing campaign for AT&T.Prize: $3,000, HQ tour, meetings with AT&T executives, management development training, career opportunities

PEPSICO MEETING OF THE MINDS

Competition: Create a video explaining a campaign idea that connects PepsiCo with up-and-coming musicians.Prize: Paid summer internship ($10,000), meeting with CMO Frank Cooper III

TECHNOVATION CHALLENGE

Competition: Develop a mobile app prototype that solves a real problem in your community. For girls 10-18, mentor for each team.Prize: $10,000 seed funding and a trip to World Pitch in San Francisco

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

COMPETITIONS KEY TRAITS

01. PROJECT-BASED, SOLUTION-DRIVEN(+) Students launch real solutions for real problems(+) Often team-based and collaborative(+) Participants have “something to show” for their effort(+) Brands get a chance to see potential talent at work(-) High barrier for participation, only the most engaged enter

02. NATIONAL OR WORLDWIDE(+) Not limited to geographic areas, inclusive of all(+) Wider “recruiting” net for involved brands(-) Can entail higher costs for effective execution

03. AWARDS-FOCUSED

(+) Drives students to compete and complete(+) Awards often entail continued learning experience(s)(-) Only a limited few can win these experiences

Above: Two brand competitions I won while in college: CosmoGirl Project 2024

and Caples Student Campaign οf the Year.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

COMPETITIONS OUTCOMES

JAKE BUNGERU. OF NEBRASKA ’16 (NE)

Winner of PepsiCo's Meeting of the Minds national marketing

competition and account manager at student-led ad firm Jacht Ad Lab (college course). Interning at PepsiCo HQ this

summer, joining the company’s new content production house,

Pepsi Content Studio.

MARILU DUQUEDELTONA HS ’16 (FL)

Winner of multiple competitions (MIT Dream It.Code It. Win It.,

El Hackathon, Ashoka's Catapult Incubator, iD Tech Camp, NCWIT Aspirations).

Founded STEMLatina.com and Google:SiSTEMa. Also Ann Taylor ANNPower Fellow,

Microsoft teen reviewer, and Toyota teen ambassador.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

TRAINING/INTERNSHIPS ARE RARE, BUT EXIST

Throughout discovery interviews, I spoke with a number of organizations running career development training programs for high school students. Mostly non-profits.

High school internships, on the other hand, tend to be one-off occurrences for top performing students.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

TRAINING/INTERNSHIPS KEY TRAITS

01. SOCIAL GOOD-FOCUSED(+) Training programs are often non-profits, focused on at-risk or underserved youth(+/-) Programs don’t focus on value-add with projects, but rather skills development (may be too “soft”)(-) May not entail full-on “real life work experience”

02. UNEXPLORED SPACE(+) Lots of space for innovation(-) High school internships are seen as a risky use of resources(-) High schoolers need greater guidance (and thus more attention from managers, who are typically untrained to accommodate)(-) Lack of opportunities due to legal constraints

03. COLLEGE-LEVEL

(+) High school achievers are highly lauded when they emerge(-) Most opportunities only begin at college level

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

TRAINING/INTERNSHIPS OUTCOMES

SEJAL MAKHEJAHOLTON-ARMS SCHOOL ’17 (MD)

LearnServe International (after-school entrepreneurship and

public service training program) alum. Founded The Elevator

Project. Joining new LearnServe summer incubator

to further her non-profit. Launching program to help

fellow high schoolers find their passion.

AHMED DIABATEWACHUSETT HS ’13 (MA)

INROADS alum. Interned during freshman year of

college at MetLife. Founded Inner Circle, a musician+fan

engagement app. Now Director of Innovation for Era of the

Engineer, a movement created by Grammy-nominated audio engineer, DJ, and producer

Young Guru.

JARED ZONERAICHBERGEN CO. ACADEMIES ’15 (NJ)

Interned in engineering at tech startup Newlio his freshman

summer and was Warby Parker's first tech intern during

sophomore year. Landed Google and eBay internships, but couldn't be hired due to legal constraints for minors.

Founded hackBCA.

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

HOW DO WE GET STUDENTS CLOSER TO

CAREER-ORIENTED LEARNING?

CREATE A PROGRAM THAT MEETS THE NEEDS OF BOTH STUDENTS AND BUSINESSES.

Which businesses are most engaged in K-12 education?

How and why?

02.

COMPANIES HAVE THREE KEY MOTIVATIONS

CSR

FOUNDATION GIVING AND VOLUNTEERISM

MARKETING

TEENS ARE A TARGET MARKET FOR MANY BRANDS

RECRUITING

PIPELINE DEVELOPMENT FOR YOUNG TALENT

FOUNDATIONS ARE KEY SUPPORTERS

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

MASTERCARD WALMART INTEL

WALMART FOUNDATIONDirects charitable giving to four core areas: Hunger Relief & Healthy Eating, Sustainability, Women's Economic Empowerment, and Career Opportunity via local, state, and national grants. Recently invested $1 million grant to send 300 veterans with disabilities to entrepreneurship bootcamp (part of a $40 million commitment).

INTEL FOUNDATIONHighly active investor in technology education. Focused on educational opportunities and quality of life improvements, its funds often go towards STEM innovation, women and girls empowerment, and underserved youth programs. Often the largest logo on youth competition or hackathon sponsor pages.

MASTERCARD FOUNDATIONHas supported entrepreneurship education programs since 2001. Recently invested $1 million (March 2015) to Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship to develop Global Girls Entrepreneurship Project and sustain current NFTE programs in U.S. and internationally, on top of $1 million invested in 2011.

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

FOUNDATIONS INVESTING IN EDUCATION

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A foundation is a non-profit entity endowed or contributed to by the parent corporation.

Foundations organize, focus, track, and publicize a corporation’s philanthropic efforts.

Charitable focus areas often relate directly to the corporation’s strategic interests and boards are composed of company officials.

Though, foundations must follow laws governing private foundations and public charities (not the case with corporate direct giving programs.

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

WHAT DO CORPORATE FOUNDATIONS DO?

Above: Hive Learning Network, a Mozilla Foundation initiative

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

• Incentive to develop future workforce talent

• Tendency to serve underrepresented groups (e.g. minorities, girls, impoverished)

• Interest in tracking outcomes through to job market to continually support past beneficiaries

CAREER-READY COMMUNITY

EDUCATION IS A TOP PRIORITY

• Giving is often focused around particular communities

• Foundations strive to improve the immediate communities in which their parent companies operate

• Grant-seekers should look to find foundations with strong interests in the communities the non-profit is helping

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

01. FOUNDATIONS INVEST• In K-12 and college education• In young adult continued education• In skills development training programs

02. COMPANIES HIRE• Based on resumes and interviews• With little knowledge of whether they’ve

invested in that person’s education

03. BOTH WANT MORE

• Foundations want to know their investment outcomes

• Companies want to further support students they’ve made investments in previously

COMPANIES DESIRE AN EXTENDED HIRING FUNNEL

INROADS STUDENT YEARUP

INTERNENTRY

HIRE

HIGH SCHOOL

COLLEGE

GRAD

Foundations and corporations desire a concerted partnership towards developing

tomorrow’s workforce.

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ENGAGED BUSINESSES

RECRUITERS DON’T HAVE ENOUGH RESOURCES

“If your business has endless resources, it totally makes sense to get involved with high school recruiting. But internships are often just a way to assess potential hires for post-graduate positions. That’s the ‘we only talk to college juniors’ mentality.

There are programs that take a few steps back and look at freshmen and sophomores in college. But this is a ‘junior internship’ of sorts and takes more management resources and hand-holding.

Of course you can take this all the way back to high school, but it becomes a challenge of resources.”

- COLLEGE RECRUITERTECH COMPANY

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

• College recruiting is an indicator of where high school opportunities will lie

• College hackathons are prime engineering recruiting grounds

• High school hackathons are becoming college admissions and coding school recruiting spots

• Recruiters want to see talent at work before committing

• This creates unintentional learning opportunities for students

RECRUITING IS BECOMING EXPERIENTIAL

SHOW ME

Above: The Codecademy engineering team at HackMIT with top Codecademy user, “splitpeasoup.”

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

MARKETING: A VALUABLE MOTIVATION

02 BRAND STUDIES 03 SYNTHESIS01 BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH

• Youth marketing agencies conduct ongoing ethnographic research to understand teen behaviors

• Ex: Fuse Marketing’s white paper: "30 Second Insights: Teen Values Signify It’s Time for Brands to Develop a Snapchat Strategy” and MRY’s "Class of 2015” social media and tech study (meet2015.com)

• Brands come to youth marketing agencies with specific questions: “Why aren’t millennials buying Harley Davidson motorcycles?”

• Agencies engage youth consumers in research

• Outcome is often messaging shift, but sometimes product remix

• Tech company involvement in college hackathons is sometimes marketing-driven

• Hackathon attendees are current and future users of the sponsors’ products (e.g. APIs)

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

YOUTH MARKETING COMPONENTS

01. FOCUS GROUPS(+) Real-life interaction with consumers(+) Chance to see students react to others’ thoughts(-) Stringent legal guidelines regarding time and setup(-) Inability to revisit particular questions or individual participants

02. ONLINE SURVEYS(+) Massive distribution(+) Ability to collect and analyze data(-) Lacks personal touch

03. ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES

(+) Ability to study users in their home environments(-) Costly and resource-intensive

Above: A look inside marketing agency MRY. Captioned “Creatives being creatives” on MRY’s Instagram.

BOTTOM LINE…

(+) Agencies are interested in having ongoing, integrated connections with young people (e.g. through product dev, launch)(-) Focus on marketing and value-extraction may deplete educational value to students

ENGAGED BUSINESSES

FINDING THE OVERLAP IN NEEDS

STUDENTS BUSINESSES

• CSR: Foundation giving and volunteerism

• Recruiting: Pipeline development for young talent

• Marketing: Teens are a target market for many brands

• Exposure: Access to businesses and their leaders

• Experience: Knowledge and development of skills that are valuable for their futures

• Opportunity: Early career options besides retail and service jobs

HOW DO WE MARRY THE NEEDS OF STUDENTS

AND BUSINESSES?

PARTNER WITH FOUNDATIONS FOR SUPPORT AND COMPANIES FOR MENTORSHIP

TO OFFER LEARNING-FOCUSED PROGRAMS.

What scalable opportunities exist to solve

the skills gap between the classroom and workforce?

03.

OPPORTUNITIES

01. STUDENT-CENTRICInvolves the “user” in program design, focusing on customizable solutions and individual needs and goals

02. OPEN SOURCEProject-based and open to the public, so that users can build portfolios and gain insights from the community

03. SUPPORTIVE/STRUCTURED

Structured just enough to provide a platform for students to dive into their own passions and projects

MARKERS OF A GOOD PROGRAM

STUDENT-CENTRIC

OPENSOURCE

STRUCT-URED

SELF-DIRECTED

04. SELF-DIRECTED/EMPOWERING

Student-led, so that students learn how to lead, plan, and execute upon their ideas

OPPORTUNITIES

KEY SETBACKS FOR EMPLOYERS

“Our foundation does community outreach, and I’m looking to parallel our college program for high schools. The

students’ content base is limited, though — so I haven’t figured out yet if they will be productive contributors for the company. Also, I have to think about compliance. And structuring special sessions and documents for

underaged talent.”

- Campus programs recruiter, Tech firm

01 LEGAL ISSUES 02 LACK OF STRUCTURE

03 LIMITED RESOURCES 04 TARGETED GIVING

• Build out services for businesses to offer high school internships (e.g. legal advice, talented student pool, programming)

• Mentor students on the basics of business to get them to the interview (e.g. resume writing, LinkedIn building, interviewing skills)

• Build a database of businesses that offer internships

• Provide continual content to both parties to maintain the network

OPPORTUNITIES

HIGH SCHOOL INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

CONCEPT

• Aim to scale Noble Impact’s current class content to a wider audience by creating an online course (e.g. EdX, Udemy)

• Create content to teach educators how to lead this new way of teaching

• Produce modular content for use in the classroom and by students when they’re learning at their own pace

• Hold regional training seminars to further support educators on this new method and style of content

OPPORTUNITIES

NOBLE IMPACT ONLINE COURSE

CONCEPT

• Support students across the state and/or nation in creating Noble Impact entrepreneurship clubs

• Provide structured on-boarding documentation for getting a club started

• Create a social network for students across the nation to learn from each other (e.g. Facebook group)

• Invite club leaders to Little Rock for a seminar on leading a club and making impact in their local community

• Support leaders throughout school year for programming ideas and statewide/national contests and programs (e.g. ARHSSW)

OPPORTUNITIES

STUDENT-LED CLUBS

CONCEPT

• Gather collaborators in NWA and Central Arkansas to host students within their businesses for day

• Build a program of office tours, lunches with young entrepreneurs, executive talks, training sessions, and student-to-entrepreneur problem-solving exercises, pitch competitions

• Provide transportation and organization for students, so that all students can partake

• Use Meetup Everywhere to empower others to create regional events, and stream talks online, so all can be involved

OPPORTUNITIES

HIGH SCHOOL ENTREPRENEURSHIP WEEK

CONCEPT

• Expand current Institute business solutions competition and i2e education solutions competition to award top students with internships, executive meetings, and career opportunities

• Scope projects so that they are manageable by high school students and valuable for businesses (biggest challenge right now)

• Partner with foundations to develop this program and provide learning-centric experiences for students

OPPORTUNITIES

INSTITUTE & I2E INTERNSHIPS

CONCEPT

• Create a student board that operates like the Board of Directors to direct Noble Impact programming

• Practice what we preach, in that student voice is the most important element in this conversation

• Choose a set board for each school year, so that students gain valuable experience as contributors and leaders, but also give others students a chance to get involved

OPPORTUNITIES

NOBLE IMPACT STUDENT BOARD

CONCEPT

• Noble Impact must become a thought leader in the education space in order to make the biggest impact possible

• The blog should be a destination for the latest discussions on education innovation

• Noble leaders should be contributing to national publications about the future of education

• Noble students and their accomplishments should be the center of the conversation

• Every event/program Noble holds should be written about by Noble (what it was and what it means for students)

OPPORTUNITIES

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

CONCEPT

What should I do after MIT Sloan to have the greatest

impact in education?

04.

I HAVE THREE KEY VALUES

IMPACT

AM I MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE

WORLD?

GROWTH

AM I BECOMING A BETTER PERSON

THROUGH MY WORK?

PASSION

AM I SPENDING MY TIME IN WAYS THAT IGNITE MY SOUL?

HOW DO I STAY TRUE TO MY VALUES AND LIVE A

MEANINGFUL LIFE?

JOIN A TEAM OF PEOPLE WHO ARE CHANGING THE MOST IMPORTANT

SYSTEM IN AMERICA: OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM.

THANK YOU!{^‿^}

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hi@ericaswallow.com

linkedin.com/ericaswallow

870.565.5200

@ericaswallow

If this presentation has inspired an idea, jogged a memory, or compelled you to reach out for any other reason, please do get in touch! My contact information is below, and I’d be ecstatic to hear from you about how we can improve the education system.

APPENDIX

CONTACT INFORMATION