An article in New York Daily News covers the increasing demand for the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE) courses in our faltering economy. NFTE was founded by Kaizen interviewee Steve Mariotti, who states, “Kids are aware of how fragile a job is and they begin to think about how they could create a job if they had to.” The article also profiles several young graduates of the program who have become entrepreneurial success stories.

Shown above, NFTE graduate Steve Gordon, 18-year-old founder of TatooID.

Read the article here.

Read our full-length interview with Steve Mariotti.

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) recently won a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers for NFTE’s mathematics curriculum “Entrepreneurship: Owning Your Future”. From the announcement: “Written by NFTE Founder Steve Mariotti, the curriculum teaches fundamentals of mathematics as well as comprehensive guide to developing a business plan. It focuses on critical basic business skills including business communications, negotiating, business ethics, social responsibility, time management, and goal setting.” We interviewed Mr. Mariotti for the August 2009 issue of Kaizen (PDF). Read the full-length interview here.

Thomas L. Friedman writes in a recent New York Times article that President Obama should be focusing on inspiring America’s youth to become entrepreneurial rather than playing the blame game with bankers. By contrast, Friedman praises Kaizen interviewee Steve Mariotti’s NFTE as an example of an organization doing excellent work with young entrepreneurs.

Read the full article here.

TEN9EIGHT, an inspiring documentary that follows several young entrepreneurs (a few are graduates of Kaizen interviewee Steve Mariotti’s NFTE program), opens in several major U.S. cities this Friday, November 13th.

Quoted from the New York Times article about the film: “I hope millions of kids see it,” said Steve Mariotti. For some youngster out there, he said. “it will be life-changing.”

See the TEN9EIGHT website for more information, including clips and showtimes. Watch the trailer below.

Steve Mariotti is the founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). Before NFTE, Mr. Mariotti was a successful entrepreneur and a teacher in some of New York’s most challenging schools. Because of his innovative methods for teaching business concepts Mariotti was named Teacher of the Year for New York State in 1988. We met with Mr. Mariotti in New York to explore his thoughts on his passion for teaching and entrepreneurship education as an exit strategy from poverty for at-risk youth.

Kaizen: You were mugged in 1981 by three teenagers in New York’s Lower East Side, and that led you to a major career change?

Mariotti: It did. The mugging caught me emotionally off guard, and I had a lot of flashbacks afterward. It got me interested in the question of why some kids would humiliate me over a small amount of money. And I started to think: Had they been able to sell me something or ask me to invest in a business deal, they could have gotten a lot more money and it would have been a win/win situation for everyone. And that really got me interested in a new career path in education, which turned out great.
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The latest issue of Kaizen features our interview with Steve Mariotti, founder of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), an organization dedicated to providing entrepreneurship education to low-income youths.

Also featured in Kaizen are CEE guest speakers David Mayer and C. Bradley Thompson, an interview with Steve Kadamian on his entrepreneurship course, and a report on the 2009 High School Entrepreneur Day.

A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post separately the full interview with Mr. Mariotti.

If you would like to receive a complimentary issue of the print version of Kaizen, please email your name and postal address to CEE [at] Rockford.edu.