This is a big one! Towards the end of my sophomore year of high school, I started having a lot of conversations with friends about what we wanted to do in college. The overwhelming answer was 'business' or 'tech'. However, we had no effective classes in either of those subjects.

Me and a few friends set out to close this gap. Fortunately, we lived close to Princeton and were lucky to find determined mentors at the University to advise and guide us, as naive 15-16 year olds.

What we settled on creating was an organization that taught our middle and high school peers about what it was like to be an entrepreneur or innovator through three main avenues:

• Guest speaker seminars (STEMinars when speakers had STEM background 😉) from 'innovators' (local investors, university professors, space explorers, college entrepreneurs, and more!)
• Public speaking classes taught by us (the founders) in small group classes of 8-12, with incredible feedback and testimonials from parents
• An Innovation Contest, which was essentially a pitch competition in the spirit of Shark Tank

Here’s an archive of the website. the Facebook page lives on and is a testament to the impact we were able to create on 400+ middle and high schoolers and their parents, across 6 schools in three counties, in just 18 months.

I learned a ton through this about teamwork, publicity, building community, and overall, just in getting shit done. It inspired and has informed a lot of the professional decisions I've made since then, and is an experience I will always cherish.

I've included a few photos below from some of our cool events (Please don't mind the edits, I was like 16)