Students win hundreds at the Emerging Entrepreneurs Leadership Symposium
September 26, 2024

This year’s Emerging Entrepreneur Leadership Symposium ended with clapping, dancing, and jubilant shouting as the shark tank competition winners found out they won $200 each for their team’s marketing pitch. United Way of the Capital Area, JSU Educational Opportunity Center, and JSU TRIO Talent Search programs collaborated to host a symposium where high school juniors could come together and learn about marketing, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

Students from Piney Woods, Provine, Lanier, Forest Hill, and Callaway High Schools filed into the Mississippi e-Center on September 25, 2024, greeted by staff members from each hosting organization. The staff handed students symposium badges and wristbands that would guide them throughout the symposium. The colored wristbands represented the teams into which the students would later be divided for the final Shark Tank competition.

The symposium started with an opening panel about business leadership. The panel consisted of Treona and Marcus Landfair of Hopeful Community Outreach, Teresa Kennedy of Fifty-Five Twenty Public Relations Agency, Rickey Jones of the JSU Small Business Development Center, and Maranda Joiner of Succeed and Elevate. The moderator and students asked questions about time management, steps to create an LLC, and mentorship.

After the opening session, students attended workshops on the four p’s of marketing: price, product, placement, and promotion. “Let’s go! Let’s go! Ya’ll got to learn! Let’s do it!” said Jhourdun Stafford, one of United Way’s Youth Ambassadors, as he directed students to breakout rooms. The Youth Ambassadors served as volunteers for the symposium. Led by ambassadors, attendees rotated from room to room, diligently taking notes and asking questions to help prepare for the competition. “In this day and age, especially, it’s a lot of people want to be business owners, so I just wanted to help other people find out what to do,” said Malcolm Wilson, a senior Youth Ambassador from Provine High School. Workshop facilitators represented industries including banking, construction, higher education, and state agencies.

The JSU Educational Opportunity Center, a symposium co-host, provides alternative programming to traditional college degree courses. Julis Franks, the center's director, mentioned how advantageous it was to collaborate with United Way on this event. “Partnering with United Way allowed us to offer an event where students can gauge the depth and breadth of working as an entrepreneur,” said Franks. “What I loved the most about it was their connection with the many business owners in the area. United Way was able to bring in so many lucrative business owners, but also some who were very impactful in the conversations they were having with the students.”

Local business owners' participation did not stop at the opening panel discussion or the workshops. The symposium concluded with a shark tank competition judged by banking, marketing, job and economic development, and government administration professionals. The hosting organizations randomly assigned students to teams and an industry type to develop a product and elevator pitch. The groups presented, and the judges grilled them with questions to see if they could apply the skills taught throughout the day. At the end, the judges tabulated scores and decided on the winners.

“It was real inspiring to see those kids come together with complete strangers. They worked with their peers that they met for the very first time, and they came up with a concept,” said Kenitra Wallace, the Vice President of Community Impact for United Way. She boasted about her pride in the teams’ successful synergy.  “I was very inspired to see that because you don’t see a lot of people, [or] adults able to collaborate. You would have never known that they didn’t know each other,” said Wallace.

The initial cash prize for each winning team member was slated to be $100. However, after the President and CEO of United Way witnessed the exceptional pitches, she doubled the prize money. The winning team comprised ten Forest Hill, Callaway, and Provine High School students. Five chose to create accounts at Community Bank and five at JPMorgan Chase.