Hatching Entrepreneurs

By: Jennifer McGuiggan

September 13, 2006

“Ever since I was young, I’ve always been an entrepreneur,” says Tonya Groover, a senior computer science major at the University of Pittsburgh. But she never called herself one until the summer she turned 16 and attended a Biz Camp presented by the National Foundation of Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE, pronounced “nifty”).

She enrolled in the two week camp at the Carnegie Science Center at the encouragement of her mother, who “noticed a natural ability in me,” Groover says. “Before I started the program, I never saw myself as an entrepreneur.” But from the time she was a child with a lemonade stand, the Penn Hills native says she used her ingenuity to make a little cash. Her early ventures, which included making greeting cards, selling candy, and offering computer tutoring, served her well. In 2001 Groover’s NFTE business plan received honorable mention and in 2003 she was named a NFTE Entrepreneur of the Year.

Today, she is the founder of the Technology Leadership Institute, a non-profit academic enrichment program that builds math and computer science skills in high school students. Groover says that learning to write a business plan for NFTE enabled her to write the proposal that got University funding for the Institute.

Community involvement

Founded in New York City’s South Bronx by Steve Mariotti, a business executive and entrepreneur turned public high school teacher, NFTE began as a way to keep students in school and improve their academic performance. It is now an international organization that helps young people from low-income communities build academic skills and unlock their entrepreneurial creativity.

According to Jerry Cozewith, executive director for NFTE Greater Pittsburgh, NFTE came to town in 1994. The Pittsburgh office, one of 10 main NFTE locations around the county, works primarily through the Pittsburgh Public Schools and reaches about 500 high school students annually. Other local NFTE program locations include charter schools and non-profit programs.

Hosanna House, Inc., a non-profit community center in Wilkinsburg, recently presented a five day NFTE Biz Camp to 11 local teenagers. Steve Hellner-Burris, project manager at Hosanna House, says that they decided to offer the program after receiving requests from students to attend their adult microenterprise program. “The NFTE curriculum is very much more hands-on and works well because the young people get more engaged with it.” Students attended the camp free of charge thanks to a sponsorship grant from the City of Pittsburgh Weed & Seed program.

Dave Nelsen, founder of the Pittsburgh-based company TalkShoe, serves as chair of the local NFTE advisory board and volunteers as a classroom speaker. “NFTE opens people’s eyes to the possibilities,” he says. “I think we tend to think that entrepreneurship is something that someone else does, not something that I do.” Nelsen tells students, “I didn’t have a special certificate that allowed me to create businesses. It’s something that anyone can do if they have a plan.”

Academic success

While some NFTE graduates do go on to start their own businesses, the majority do not, says Cozewith. And that’s just fine with him. “I’ve spent nearly 30 years working in the human services not-for-profit system,” he says. “And I have never found a smarter, more intelligent anti-poverty strategy than NFTE.” Cozewith explains that NFTE’s main goal is to help students achieve academically, recognize their own potential, and discover opportunities for their present and future.

By teaching students abstract reasoning skills in the context of real-world scenarios, NFTE empowers them to achieve academically and “see an opportunity to do more than they’ve seen others do,” says Cozewith. “They see that they’re smart and that by applying things like math and reading to things that matter to them, sometimes it flips a switch. It’s no longer an abstract – it’s real.”

Cozewith points out that in addition to improving students’ academic success, NFTE teaches them business basics. As a result, says Cozewith, graduates are better prepared for employment because “they understand the language and world of work. And it enables them to build a life that’s beyond minimum wage and low-wage employment.”

Justin Strong, a NFTE graduate and co-owner and founder of Shadow Lounge, LLC, agrees. “You’re going to pick up some life skills” along the way, he says. Like Groover, it was Strong’s mother who encouraged – or in his case, insisted – that he apply for the first Biz Camp in 1995. Strong grew up around business; his family has owned Strong Dry Cleaners in Pittsburgh since 1945. He says that NFTE gave him a language to support what he already knew informally. Strong worked for NFTE from 1997-2000 and was named a NFTE Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999. Then in 2000, while building his business, 7^th Movement Development, Inc., he left the University of Pittsburgh to focus solely on entrepreneurship.

Writing the plan

A large part of the NFTE curriculum centers on writing and presenting a business plan, complete with financial statements. As part of their training, students receive coaching from local entrepreneurs. Grace Robinson, a State Farm independent agent and founder of Tomorrow’s Future, Inc., a non-profit entrepreneurship training program, has volunteered as a business plan judge for the past several years. She says that she’s consistently impressed with the quality of both the plans and the coaching that students receive.

“For me to be a business owner and know how many years it took me to develop a business plan – to see students develop their own plans is amazing.” As a result of NFTE, says Robinson, “We will have more students staying in our city, opening businesses in our city, becoming community leaders, and also fostering employment opportunities for others.”

Groover is a prime example of Robinson’s vision. She plans to find additional funding for the Institute and make it her fulltime job. “It could be a fulltime job now, but I have to graduate,” she says. Her ultimate goal is to expand the program into developing countries.

This kind of entrepreneurial thinking and goal setting is at the heart of NFTE. “When you think about all the problems in the world and you come back to the root causes, a lot of times you come back to lack of education and lack of opportunity, or the perception of a lack of opportunity,” says Nelsen. NFTE graduates “learn that they can pick a path and pursue it.” And whether that path is business ownership or something else, it means a brighter future for Pittsburgh.

To learn more about volunteering with NFTE, contact Jerry Cozewith at 412-456-4169.

Jennifer McGuiggan is a freelance writer and editor and owner of The Word Cellar. She writes for a variety of publications and clients, including businesses, entrepreneurs, and non-profits. Her last article for Pop City was about the cost of living in Pittsburgh.

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