Boston Globe Article
Teaching Business 101:
A family team helps youths learn entrepreneurial skills
When Julie Nessen runs the show, no one gets fired.
Nessen, cofounder of Young Entrepreneurs Alliance, has spent nearly a decade teaching teens how to run a business -- drawing up marketing plans, balancing books, and sealing deals.
Since 2002, she has run an incubator for entrepreneurs at Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School in Marlborough that counts New Balance among its clients.
''So much of the battle with these kids is that they feel on the outside of the business world, that they'll never be accepted, and that they're seen as punks," Nessen said.
She and other staff members created a graphic design firm called Digitize. The class chooses a company it wants to pitch to, and then students produce designs, create a marketing plan, figure costs, and prepare and implement a client presentation.
Jessie Blaser of Northborough, now a freshman at Fitchburg State College, was involved with Nessen's program last year as it was launching Digitize.
''We went out to lunch to learn how to eat properly, how to dress for business meetings, how to act during a business meeting, how to shake hands properly, and to look someone in the eye," Blaser said.
Digitize designed the holiday card that New Balance sent to some 4,000 associates around the world last year.
''They won this account," Nessen said of her students. ''This was not a favor. They bid against real companies."
The students worked on their designs for a month, then spent a week practicing their presentation. ''The bidding process gives the kids experience with big executives," Blaser said.
''It's hard to decide where you want to be professionally at age 16," said Breighana Seighigian of Marlborough. ''Getting a lot of the experience right now -- being with real clients and having real sit-downs with them -- is an amazing experience."
Nessen, who lives in Concord, cofounded Young Entrepreneurs Alliance with her father, Robert L. Nessen, a lawyer and investment banker who lives in Watertown.
''He wanted to work with [underprivileged] teens, particularly in the prison system, on business math," she said of her father. ''He said if they have math, it's a universal language."
Before joining the Assabet program, Julie Nessen ran Maynard All-Purpose, a landscape/handyman business in Maynard, with teenagers referred from schools and group homes.
Young Entrepreneurs Alliance also runs a high-tech document-imaging business at Madison Park Vocational High School in Roxbury and a similar business at Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Allston. More programs are in the works, including one for college-bound students. The nonprofit relies on donations from foundations, corporations, and individuals.
''I've learned how to speak my mind and actually talk to people," said Blaser of her experience with the alliance. ''I used to be very, very scared to talk to people; I'd sit there and sweat and be really nervous. Julie would say, 'Don't worry -- they're people like you . . . be yourself . . . don't go overboard and don't slouch; be proper, but speak your mind.' "