Greif Scholarship Winner Meets Obama

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.

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