Business Week Article

BUSINESS M A G A Z I N E Manufacturer & Business Association

Class of 1998 Where Are They Now? pg.12

ACES

VOLUME XXII, NUMBER 2

FEBRUARY 2009

Where Are They Now? ACES marks 10th year of operating Pennsylvania Business Week, 50th Outstanding Citizen Award The afternoon bell signals the end the school day, but there is no break for Val Laufenberg. Full of energy, the executive director of the nonprofit organization, Americans for the Competitive Enterprise System (ACES) headquartered in Erie, is already busily planning for the next few weeks, preparing herself and her team for an intense week of working with high school students throughout Northwest Pennsylvania. For Laufenberg, working with these youngsters isn’t a “job,” but a calling. In fact, 10 years after ACES took the reins of Pennsylvania Business Week (PBW) from the Manufacturer & Business Association, she is just as enthusiastic about the prospects of introducing this one-of-a-kind in-school program to a new group of students, as she was when she first started out. Like any business venture, Pennsylvania Business Week was inspired by an idea – to expose high school juniors to economics education and promote the free enterprise system in an intense, weeklong in-school program. The test site for the first program began at Fort LeBoeuf High School in 1997-1998 under the leadership of the late principal, Art Bergamasco, and was profiled in the February 1998 Business Report article, “Tomorrow’s CEOs.” More than a decade later, the program has reached more than 10,000 students at 14 high schools in five counties throughout Western Pennsylvania.

How it Works

Shown here are CEOs from the inaugural 1997-1998 Pennsylvania Business Week program at Fort LeBoeuf High School, including top row, from left: Ryan Carroll, Jill Bendig and Grady Powell; second row, from left: Katie Kimble, Lyndsey Cash, Seth Hunt and Meghan Coughlin; third row, from left; Mandy Huston, Mike Steigerwald, Natalie Matta and Jennifer Huston; and bottom row, from left: Amanda Lachowski, Ricky Peck, Sarah Falkowski and Stephanie Brown.

Divided into teams, or companies, the goal of PBW is to teach students the fundamentals of business and running a company in a competitive environment, the building blocks of the free enterprise system. To make the experience more realistic, each company has a student CEO and executive management team to run the operation, while a businessperson from the community and teacher serve as business advisers for the companies throughout 12 business quarters, or three years, that are condensed into one week. Students make all managerial decisions including pricing, marketing, production, research and development and human resources, and at week’s end compete in five competitions: advertising, stockholders, trade show, return on net assets and top company. All members of the winning team are awarded $100 cash.

Oftentimes students are shocked to learn that the program is primarily computer-free, but rather a “brain game” that tests competence, competitiveness and strategy. It is a combination of fundamental business concepts and economics that incorporates logical thinking, math, reading and writing. “I want to see what’s in here first – to get the ideas, the brain working,” Laufenberg says. “When you come into a stockholders’ meeting and you have all these lovely charts and graphs that you’ve made from an Excel spreadsheet, do you know what they really mean?”

Laufenberg

History: Developed by the Manufacturer & Business Association in conjunction with Fort LeBoeuf High School in late 1997, Pennsylvania Business Week (PBW) is the first in-school program of its kind in the United States. In 1999, the Americans for the Competitive Enterprise System (ACES) added PBW to its list of economic education programs. Funding and donations: PBW receives no government support and is funded entirely through sponsorships and donations. Businesses are encouraged to help with tax-deductible contributions, or to participate in the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program when donating to the program. According to ACES, 90 percent of a company’s donation to PBW could be eligible for a state tax credit through EITC. Operation: PBW is currently run by ACES and its Board members: Charles “Boo” Hagerty, Hamot Health Foundation; John Krahe, Manufacturer & Business Association; James Ohrn, Custom Engineering Co.; Jeremy Lincoln, Lincoln Metal Processing Co.; and Carl Wolfrom, Northwest Savings Bank. Volunteers and sponsorships: The program relies on volunteers from the business community to serve as advisers, judges and sponsors, and regularly features a presentation by Chuck Jenkins of the American Manufacturing Tribute Bike – Careers in Manufacturing Tour. Current and past participants: Corry Area High School, Fort LeBoeuf, Neshannock, Lincoln, New Castle Area, Maplewood, Cambridge Springs, Saegertown, Sharpsville, Strong Vincent, Girard, Union City, Youngsville and Shenango high schools. For more information: Visit www.aceserie.org, pabusinessweek.org or call 814/456-7007. 12 < www.mbausa.org < February 2009

According to Laufenberg, the program is designed to expose students to economic education – which is still not a required course in Pennsylvania high schools, but also to give students a better picture of “business” and what’s involved. “You say businessperson to a student and they have an image of a guy in a suit behind a desk, and they have no idea what he is doing,” explains Laufenberg. “After Business Week, they come to understand that there are a lot of different career opportunities for them to explore. It’s not just sitting behind a desk; it’s being creative; it’s working with your hands. It’s talking, sales and production. It’s marketing. It’s all of that.” And the best way to do this is through a program like PBW, which partners the business community with the educational community. “ACES’s whole mission is to promote free enterprise and economic education by providing partnerships between the business and educational communities,” says Laufenberg. “Because if you are going to teach something then teach what it is, and no one knows this better than the business community.” Dave Sterrett, an engineer at the consulting/engineering firm Herbert, Rowland & Grubic and Summit Township engineer, has served as an adviser since the program’s inception and has watched its progression year after year. Nothing, he says, compares to seeing the students gain a solid grasp of key business concepts throughout the week. “When you work with these kids that have never done anything with accounting and you watch them put together a balance sheet and income statement, Sterrett and they understand the general concept or general content of what that report is including and telling the shareholder of the company, that to me is really neat,” he says. According to Laufenberg, ACES measures the success of the program on the evaluations at the end of the week. Overwhelming throughout the program’s history, more than 90 percent of students say that, yes, they have a “better understanding of how business operates in the American economy after participating in Business Week.” But the real measure, she says, often comes years down the road. “It’s what I call the ‘aha moment,’ ” Laufenberg says. “They hear it in some other form – on the job, or in a college class, and they’ll go – oh yeah. I remember. They taught me that in Business Week and they see the connection to reality.” In marking the 10th anniversary of ACES operating PBW, the Business Magazine caught up with a few of the program’s former participants to see where they are now. Many of those students agreed that, in one week, Business Week had a significant impact on them — and their careers.

Tomorrow’s CEOs Today

It’s been eight years since George Valletti participated in Business Week at Corry Area High School, but the experience has stayed with him ever since. Valletti, whose parents own a car wash and detail shop in Corry, had grown up with a family-owned business, but it was Business Week, he says, that “enhanced” his understanding of the economic progress and management. “What I’ve taken away from Business Week, when I was a junior in high school has guided me through many leadership roles through college, through where I’m currently at as a teacher,” he says. “What I’ve taken out of it is how to communicate efficiently with people and how to work with people, and how to figure out and analyze problems.” Valletti

In fact, on February 27, Valletti’s fifth-grade students at Manassas Park Elementary School in Manassas Park, Virginia, will be hosting their first trade show. Valletti’s students are working on a business project using a variation of the Business Week program he designed for his elementary school students, whose project it is to come up with a company name and logo, and develop a product that benefits society. So far, one group, Valletti says, developed a collapsible shelter for the homeless that is sturdier than a tent, while another company has come up with a communication bear, or teddy bear, that is a visual aid for the blind.

nts’ marketing and advertising skills and The trade show competition tests stude the business world. of nt them to the competitive environme

exposes

Every few weeks, Valletti says he also adds a new problem, or crisis management, for companies to tackle, to keep the project relevant to the current economic climate. One week, for example, it was a budget crunch. Many “students don’t understand the value of the American dollar,” Valletti notes. “They don’t understand how our economy works and how it’s based on supply and demand, how checks and balances work, and how gas prices fluctuate. All of that stuff I was introduced to in Business Week.”

Where It All Started Talk to Grady Powell and many of his fellow CEOs from that first Business Week program at Fort LeBoeuf High School, and you’ll find similar stories of inspiration. After his experience as CEO of Redwood Cellular during Business Week and subsequent internship at the Manufacturer & Business Association, Powell decided to major in economics education at Furman University. He worked at an advertising agency out of college and then caught what he calls the “social entrepreneurship” bug.

Powell

Today he is business director at an educational nonprofit, Trinity Forum Academy, in Maryland. He is currently leading a team of developers on a curriculum project known as Common Vocabulary, with The Earth Institute at Columbia University, which is designed to help educate high school students and the wider public about the global issues of extreme poverty, environmental degradation and public health crises. While brainstorming about the best way to present the curriculum, Powell says, it was Business Week that came to mind. “Business Week keeps popping up as one of the most influential educational experiences I’ve ever had, so we’ve considered developing a similar model,” he noted. Seth Hunt, who had been CEO of Next Wave Sound during the 1997 program at Fort LeBoeuf, is now in his fourth year of a dual doctorate program in Zoology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior (EEBB) at Michigan State University. Business Week, he notes, helped him develop the ability to organize other people toward the completion of a common goal. “Part of my undergraduate education was made possible by a volunteer service scholarship,” he explains. “I spent the better part of two years as the student leader of that organization. The organizational skills that I worked on during Business Week were directly helpful to being a successful leader within that organization.” Brian Blank was one of the members of team Mo’Shin with CEO Ryan Carroll during Business Week, and describes the program as “hands-down the best educational experience we had in high school.” “If felt like we could finally put our education to work,” he says. “For a week, we were supposed to be able to forget about homework and tests. But you know what? We took the ‘tests’ and ‘homework’ of running a business maybe more seriously than schoolwork. >

Blank

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We really wanted our business to succeed. And it did.” The program, Blank says, had a major impact on his career path. “I felt so alive while presenting our team’s television commercial and our booth at the trade show. I loved the selling, the presenting. For me, Business Week brought to life a developing desire to go into TV.” After high school, Blank attended the University of Missouri-Columbia to study broadcast journalism. From there, he pursued a career in cable news and went on to report for CNN Radio, write for CNN.com and produce FOX News anchor Neil Cavuto’s business network show. For the time being, Blank has left the world of journalism to study in a postbaccalaureate pre-med program at Harvard University, so that he’ll be able to apply for medical school someday. “A complete 180,” he says, “but something I’m very excited about.” Former Business Week CEOs Jill Bendig Runciman of Jabalojit Entertainment Division and Amanda Lachowski of SCS Fonz also have fond memories of the program and what it taught them. Runciman, a trained photographer and stay-at-home mom who resides down under in Australia, is currently putting her entrepreneurial skills to the test and starting her own company, Shutterbubs. She describes it as a “rewarding challenge” to be managing her own business while raising a child. “In high school (and now),” she notes, “I would have considered myself much more of a creative-type than a business-type, and the Business Week experience certainly taught me that business doesn’t have to be boring and there is a very real and important place for creative and artistic types within any business.” “It would be amazing if this (Business Week) was compulsory for all high school students,” she adds. Lachowski, now the education program coordinator for Friends of Deckers Creek, a small watershed nonprofit based out of Morgantown, West Virginia, says the program helped her to build her public speaking and leadership skills, which helped her excel as a freshman at Allegheny College. She also discovered that she had “a lot more to learn about the business world.” “Looking back,” she recalls, “I think the greatest lesson I learned was coming to understand how all types of people with different skills must come together to run a successful business.” Lachowski

She also adds a note of thanks to the late Art Bergamasco. “I saw him as the individual who was instrumental in this partnership and many other unique educational experiences offered during my time at Fort LeBoeuf… Sometimes all it takes is one person to inspire a whole generation.”

Get Involved Laufenberg sees such inspiration year after year. The real reason for the success of Business Week, she insists, are the volunteers – the advisers, At the end of the week, students compete in five competitions, including advertising, stockholders, trade show, return on net assets and top company. All winners of the winning team are awarded $100 cash.

14 < www.mbausa.org < February 2009

speakers, judges and sponsors who support the program, a great staff, – and the students who benefit. “Business Week doesn’t take place in a vacuum,” she says. “It takes that whole community of volunteers, whether you can give us an hour to speak, a couple hours to judge, or an entire week as an adviser – they all have an important part in making it happen, because we at ACES can’t do it on our own. It takes the business community to support it.” — This feature sponsored by National City. For more information, visit www.aceserie.org.

ACES to Honor Hamot’s Malone as Outstanding Citizen For 50 years, the Americans for the Competitive Enterprise System (ACES) has recognized an area businessperson with its Bob & Betty Merwin Outstanding Citizen Award, in honor of their practice and promotion of free enterprise in both their professional and personal life.

Malone

During a private reception co-sponsored by the Business Magazine on February 4, 2009, at the Manufacturer & Business Association Conference Center, ACES will present Hamot Health Foundation President and CEO John Malone with its highest honor. Malone was chosen based on his vision and initiative in leading others by example, and by his ongoing advocacy of the free enterprise system. “This award does not just recognize business success but also giving back to the community,” says ACES Executive Director Val Laufenberg. “Hamot does a lot for the community in regards to assistance of those in need of help and sponsorship of different types of community activities that raise our standard of living, and the enjoyment of living in a community where things like that happen.” Since coming to Hamot in 1975, Malone has served in many capacities, including administrative assistant, vice president, vice president of Regional Health Services and senior vice president of Hamot Medical Center. He then served as president and chief operating officer of Hamot Medical Center from 1989 until his appointment as CEO of Hamot Health Foundation in 1992. As ACES’s 2008 Outstanding Citizen Award recipient, Malone is the latest in a long line of influential business leaders to receive the award. Other past honorees include: 1958 Bertram Miller 1959 Norman W. Wilson 1960 G. Richard Fryling 1961 Sumner E. Nichols 1962 Arthur F. Schultz 1963 Guy W. Wilson 1964 Donald S. Leslie Sr. 1965 Robert A. Haller 1966 Robert F. Merwin 1967 Douglas M. Moorhead 1968 James M. Vicary 1969 Harold Reslink 1970 Robert Young 1971 Everett Zurn 1972 Herbert S. Sweny 1973 Thomas Lord 1974 A. Bruce Smith 1975 Henry Orth Hirt 1976 J. Robert Baldwin 1977 Ray L. McGarvey 1978 William B. Conner 1979 Charles H. Bracken 1980 John Cochran 1981 Mace Levin 1982 Joseph & Lois Dahlkemper 1983 Henry Fish

1984 Albert F. Duval 1985 Thomas L. Venable 1986 Charles R. Beckman 1987 Edmund J. Mehl 1988 F. William Hirt 1989 Carl J. Schlemmer 1990 James C. Levinson 1991 Edward M. Mead 1992 Edward P. Junker III 1993 Nicholas C. Scott 1994 None 1995 Louis P. Musante 1996 Ralph T. Wright 1997 William M. Hilbert Sr. 1998 Calvin D. Neithamer Sr. 1999 P.C. “Hoop” Roche 2000 Gary P. Schneider 2001 Joseph Prischak 2002 Kathleen Scheppner 2003 Philip M. Tredway 2004 Richard A. Merwin 2005 Harry E. Brown 2006 Manufacturer & Business Association Board of Governors 2007 Chuck Jenkins 2008 John Malone