Student Spotlight
Do you see a greater importance of financial literacy education in the future? I absolutely do believe in the value of financial literacy and having the ability to manage your own finances. It’s something so much more than people seem to realize; a lot of people think that business education is solely for the purposes of going into these different sectors of business but what people tend to miss is that no matter where you work, you’re working for a business and understanding how business works is important from that standpoint. From a personal standpoint when it comes to financial literacy there needs to be an understanding of when you get that paycheck you need to know what you’re going to do with it in order to manage your money in a way that’s going to allow you to live the quality of life that you want to. How does NXT-GEN lessen the impact the lack of financial literacy education has on high school youth? NXT-GEN bridges gaps in business and financial literacy education through a series of financially accessible experiential learning opportunities, encompassing workshops, case competitions, pitch competitions, and speaker series, collectively backed by local industry leaders. In doing so, NXT-GEN is arming students with the knowledge they need to manage both their personal finances and better understand the world of business, thus empowering them to succeed and lead in their respective careers. Overall, from NXT-GEN’s perspective, we are hoping to offer barrier free education to people regardless of your background and really be able to offer empowerment to people to take whatever means they have wherever they come from in order to grow and find new ways to continue to grow. Do you have any advice for entrepreneurial students? The best kept secret of founding anything is that nobody knows what they’re doing. Nobody can plan out every single detail and remove that level of uncertainty at every stage in starting your own initiative. The advice to anyone whether you’re a student or not entering the field of entrepreneurship is to just get started, find something small that you understand and get started with that and you’ll see things grow from there. I’ve seen it with NXT-GEN when we grew from something that was originally supposed to be just a privately run group to run one competition a year into a full slate of speaker series and competitions as we continue to hope to run nationally in the next year or so. Things will generally find their way to work out so don’t waste your time writing out a 20 page business plan hoping that every single thing happens to the letter, just get started, see what happens and be willing to go with the flow.
FOR BUSINESS STUDENTS, BY BUSINESS STUDENTS | 10
