Workforce strategy and apprenticeship expert
Crafting Impactful Curriculum | Future Founders
Future Founders offers underserved youth opportunities to connect with mentors and participate in focused educational programming in order to develop their entrepreneurial skills and mindset. One of its core components is Discover, a series of high-energy in-class workshops that teach low-income elementary and high school students how to think like an entrepreneur. Based on a program Uptake Co-Founder and CEO Brad Keywell created in 2006, Discover serves nearly 1,000 students across Chicagoland each year.
I managed all aspects of the Discover program, including content development, implementation, and logistics. I directly engaged students across twelve Chicago Public Schools during in-class sessions and monitored individual and group progress through the curriculum. Additionally, I developed and maintained volunteer and corporate partnerships.
The Challenge
Redesign and facilitate a high-quality, year-long experiential learning program to teach core entrepreneurship skills and principles underserved youth.
The Outcome
An innovative and iterative curriculum that incorporated user feedback, as well as insights from business and technology leaders, to promote student learning and achievement.
Upon joining the organization, my first task was to redesign the Discover program. Prior to my intervention, the curriculum was lecture-based rather than activity-driven, leaving students with little motivation or interest. Sessions were disjointed and incongruous, stunting long-term retention of skills and concepts. Ultimately, school leaders had begun to drop the program from their in-school activities roster.
I set out to improve the program’s efficacy, while also making it more fun and engaging for students. Taking a human-centered design approach, I utilized qualitative feedback and quantitative data from student exit surveys, as well as insights from principals and teachers, to build a new curriculum from the ground up.
Created in conjunction with consultants from Accenture and Google, the revised curriculum saw students work in small groups to complete hands-on projects in every classroom session. Sessions built upon one another, leading students from opportunity recognition and market research all the way to prototyping and business pitches. As a capstone project, each student developed, completed and presented a business plan for a product of their own design.
I also devised and implemented the Future Founders Challenge, a year-end, day-long event designed to engage students, volunteers, and funders alike. In this “Amazing Race”-style challenge, student teams competed in various volunteer-led activities that put their newly developed entrepreneurial skills to the test.
 |  |
|---|---|
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
The Impact
-
1,800 hours of service provided by volunteers
-
900 students from a dozen schools impacted annually
-
Statistically significant increase in the number of students interested in pursuing higher education
-
100 students and 25 volunteers participated in the inaugural Future Founders Challenge
-
Partnerships developed with Accenture, Motorola, Google, and Capital One
Overhauling the Discover program was an overwhelming success. As a result of the improved curriculum, we developed new educational partnerships, reaching nearly 20% more students. We saw a statistically significant increase in the number of students interested in pursuing higher education, and in becoming entrepreneurs themselves. Finally, we fostered significant corporate partnerships with Accenture, Motorola, Google, and Capital One, all of whom provided fiscal and/or consultative support.