DeAndre Martin Takes the Helm as CEOs for Tomorrow’s New CEO: A Continuum of Support (Part 2 of 2)
DeAndre Martin gained his experience working in education and economic development areas in Oklahoma City.
by Jonathan Gramling
DeAndre Martin, who has become the new CEO of CEOs of Tomorrow — replacing Dr. Roxie Hentz, the founder of CEOs who recently retired — comes out of a community whose history reflects the dynamics that happened to many urban Black communities in the 1950s – 1970s.
And Martin will use that experience and his education to help bring CEOs of Tomorrow to the next level. CEOs does in-school programming during and after school with the Madison and Sun Prairie school districts. And it also runs summer camps.
Once the participants hit high school, the programming intensifies.
“Once you get into high school, we have our incubator,” Martin said. “That’s held on Saturdays. And then we also have our Teen Ambassadors program. That’s held on Wednesday nights. Students come work for us and we teach them financial literacy tools and curriculum and then they go out in the community and teach it to their peers. They are on our staff and we pay them to do that. We also have an internship program that we run in the summer.”
And CEOs has taken its programming to the global level.
“Every two years, we take students to The Gambia in Africa,” Martin said. “We also have our International Academy in the summer. We have
students from all over the world who log into our virtual experience for four weeks solving global problems. We break students into teams and they get to hear about about all of the things that are going on globally. In our Incubator, it’s very much focused on what is happening here in the community and neighborhood. But with the International Academy, they get to meet with students from Botswana, Spain and Germany. It gives our students a global perspective. We have problems here, but there are problems everywhere around the world.”
There are two practical benefits. Because it has close ties to academic institutions, CEOs helps students earn credits and gain digital certification badges.
“We give high school credit, so you can graduate a little earlier,” Martin observed. “It looks good to get into programs like the STEM Program. You get college credit, which are expensive to come by. You get those for participating in any one of our programs. In all of our programs, we encourage students to open up savings accounts. And we know that having a savings account puts you on a path to be more financially literate. We teach financial literacy.”
And then, in the end, it helps students develop their business concepts. These are not pie-in-the-sky ideas, they are ideas with real world application.
The son of Fabiola Hamden, a CEOs board member, is a prime example.
“He started his sophomore year in CEOs and he went all the way to Good Morning America,” Martin said. “He still runs his business today and he is about to graduate from college. And this is not discretion income. It’s how he pays his rent. It’s how he has fun with his friends. This is a real opportunity for our students. And you’re going to get a job. You’re going to get internships and things like that. But to have passive income that comes in is a game changer, especially when you are coming from communities like the students we serve.”
CEOs of Tomorrow is located on International Lane near the airport. Soon, CEOs will be making a move that will place it in the midst of the business development community.
“Moving to the Black Business Hub is going to completely transform the organization,” Martin exclaimed. “As you know, we are now situated near the airport. We’re out on an island. There’s not too much. I’m sure there are entrepreneur things going on. But they probably don’t want a lot of kids around to interrupt operations. Being in the Black Business Hub is made-to-be technical assistance for every entrepreneur of color. So thinking about going back to my work at the innovation district, it takes us into a larger framework of we can now take an entrepreneur from fourth grade into adulthood and have all of the services and resources in one place. And so when we think about the longevity of Madison and our communities of color, these are tremendous opportunities to get youth on that path of entrepreneurship, create more creative businesses, grow the economy and grow a more diverse economy.”
With the Black Business Hub, the youth will be surrounded by resources and mentors that they can access whenever those things become relevant for their personal growth and the growth of their businesses.
“We are really looking forward to working with the Urban League and are very grateful that they thought of us and reserved space for us to be in the building,” Martin said. And they are very open as to what that continuum of care looks like. You can hop on the elevator and you might be on it with a lawyer or a person doing economic development or the CDFI in the building. The opportunities are endless for them to make those natural connections. When we were talking about osmosis earlier, you are just surrounded with people and being in the space. And then there are the amenities like the culinary kitchen. That completely changes the game for our organization.”
And it is accessible for the students. It is centrally located in the Madison Metropolitan area near major transportation routes.
“It’s right at the end of a bus stop, so you know transportation for young people is always a thing,” Martin said. I think this gives us better access to students and meet them where they are at.”
The move to the Black Business Hub is an opportunity for CEOs and its students to reach the next level.
“We will be moving in late June,” Martin said. “We’re running our fundraising campaign right now, our Building Tomorrow campaign. We would love for the community to invest in us, invest in the future. I’m very excited to be here in Madison. We hope to grow our footprint and with the help of the community, get CEOs rolled out. There are other students in need. We want to grow our cause and be stewards of the community.”
CEOs is poised to grow businesses of color from the ground floor up, creating an environment for entrepreneurship that will not only benefit communities of color, but also the greater Madison area as a whole. And that builds a solid economy that benefits all.
To find out more information about CEOs of Tomorrow’s fundraising campaign, visit https://givebutter.com/buildingcampaign