Business
Greif Scholarship Winner Meets Obama
- President Obama with Kalief Rollins, 17, in the Oval Office
- Photo/Pete Souza
By Anne Bergman on October 29, 2009 7:44 AM
When 17-year-old Kalief Rollins of Carson met President Barack Obama on Oct. 19, he gave the president a custom-made “Caution: Educated African American Male” T-shirt.
The shirt was not merely a gift. It was the embodiment of Rollins’ labors as the head of his own clothing business - a business that had just won him the top $10,000 prize in the 2009 Oppenheimer Funds/Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Challenge (NFTE) and an opportunity to meet the president.
Rollins beat out 24,000 entrants for his development of a business plan that sells T-shirts with positive messages, fine tuning both his plan and his presentation skills in USC Marshall School of Business professor Bill Crookston’s summer seminar at USC for high school students.
Jackie Garcia, who also completed the university’s four-week Exploring Entrepreneurship course, advanced to the event’s semifinal round with her line of costume jewelry.
Before the summer seminar, Rollins and Garcia had attended similar programs at Downey High School and Soledad Enrichment Action, a business school in Norwalk, respectively.
After winning their classroom competitions, they advanced to a regional competition at Town & Gown, where Rollins placed first and Garcia took the second spot, earning them Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurship scholarships to attend the USC seminar.
The scholarships paid for the $6,000 tuition, as well as the students’ dorm rooms, meals and books.
Crookston and his fellow USC Marshall professors also had a personal investment in their students. According to Crookston, “The faculty all zeroed in on Kalief and Jackie to give them one-on-one opportunities to build up their presentation skills.”
The work paid off as the pair headed to the nationwide Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Challenge in New York City.
“I think the seminar really made an impact on strengthening their business ideas,” said Estelle Reyes, program director for NFTE-Greater Los Angeles, who noted that Rollins and Garcia mentioned the Exploring Entrepreneurship seminar during their final presentations on Oct. 7 in Manhattan.
Rollins and Garcia were among the 28 finalists who visited New York for the daylong finals of the competition. They were judged on their business plans and presentations by a panel of business leaders, including Steven Brill, co-founder and CEO of Journalism Online, and Bobbi Brown, founder and CEO of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics.
Just as President Obama invites the winners of the Super Bowl or the World Series to the White House, he also invited the event’s winners to meet him in the Oval Office.
“That’s a hugely important statement about the value of teaching entrepreneurship to youth and the significance of this competition in inspiring students to see the potential of their own dreams,” said Amy Rosen, president and CEO of the national Entrepreneurship Challenge.
As for Rollins and Garcia, they are attending local junior colleges to pursue their dreams of transferring to USC.
To major in business, of course.
TAGS: community programs, research
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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