Prominent Youth, a Kansas City-based business mentorship program providing high school and college students the opportunity to start their own businesses, is expanding to Madison in 2008.
Prominent Youth enables students with plans for businesses to go through an eight-week training program designed to educate them on a variety of business practices and help them create a portfolio.
Students in the program then give presentations to the organization’s senior management team for approval and spend the next four months in a business incubator program to prepare their business for opening.
“It is our goal to make sure we give them enough strategies and equip them to be successful business owners and entrepreneurs,” Nicole Hodge, vice president of business development at Prominent Youth said.
When the organization decided to expand to other parts of the country, Hodge felt Madison would be an ideal location because of the number of college students and the thriving business community.
“Our goal is to really tap in more to colleges. We’d like to get some more intern programs started up,” Hodge said.
Nathan Thwing, Prominent Youth’s Madison regional manager, hopes students from UW-Madison, Edgewood College and Madison Area Technical College will become involved in the program.
“We hire students to work inside the student businesses we already have,” Thwing said, noting that the organization helps students carry out their business plans even after the incubation period.
Jessica Savage, student president of Prominent Youth and a first-year student at Parkville University in Parkville, Mo., first became involved with the organization when she produced a Christmas CD. Now involved in several other businesses through Prominent Youth, she hopes that the new Madison office will help even more students accomplish their personal goals.
“If you have any sort of passion at all to do what you want and to get something done with your life, I would go for it,” Savage said. “Just taking opportunities is exactly what will help you in the future.”
