(NECN: Latoyia Edwards) - YEA wasstarted by a father and daughter team 14 years ago.
At the time Robert Nesson was aninvestment banker, his daughter Julie was a theater director.
Both wanted to give young peoplefrom modest backgrounds a leg up in the business world.
The mission has grown into half adozen student owned and operated companies.
Getting job ready in high schoolnever sounded, nor looked so good.
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These Assabet Valley Technical HighSchool students, are already getting paid as CEOs and in other high powerpositions. They are running their own digital arts design firm as part of theYoung Entrepreneurs Alliance.
So far six student businesses haveflourished out of the Young Entrepreneurs Alliance.
The non-profit organization partnerswith vocational high schools and middle schools in Massachusetts.
Teachers use yea's curriculum tohelp students to operate their own businesses- on school property and earn realpaychecks for work.
With funding from grants and privatedonations, Julie Nesson and her father Robert created YEA in 1996. The originalmission was to help kids in the juvenile justice system become small businessowners. In 2005, Julie recalibrated the focus to vocational schools.
Since then, YEA has linked studentbusiness owners with some high-powered clients.
The students confess that learningthe people skills to run a business is not easy.
When students first come to theprogram they prefer to just do their work and stay in the background. But yeateaches them public speaking skills, and helps them develop confidence.
Kiernan used to be painfully shy butevolved into a key salesman.
And there are so many examples ofexcellence, like the time Kara earned a paycheck for all of her classmatesafter winning an account with a venture capitalist.
Oh my goodness. Yeah it was very bigmoment for me"
The big moments start out small atAssabet Valley in just four modest classrooms.
Its here that students with dreamsof one day working for Pixar animation studios add sound to high school animationprojects and future rock stars mix their own music
There's also a TV studio where theyhone their broadcasting skills.
All of the digital art projects areperfected in this space in order to graduate.
Over 95 percent of YEA students earntheir high school diplomas, compared to the statewide average of about 81percent.
Breighana is a YEA standout, she'snow enrolled in college and landed a manager's job at BJ's because of herresume building experience with YEA.For its continued investment in the future ofMassachusetts' young people, NECN and Citizens Bank has selected YEA as thisquarters Champion in Action.
