C.J. Manning spent his week in company meetings — working until 2 a.m. and presenting business plans — but Manning is not a corporate executive.
Seventeen-year-old Manning was part of Junior Achievement’s Business Week, an apprenticeship-style program designed to teach high school students the concepts of business, entrepreneurship and leadership.
During the week-long immersion camp, 171 students lived at Johnson & Wales University, where they attended lectures, networked with business leaders and worked on one of three projects.
The projects included creating a new smoothie flavor for Jamba Juice, developing a “don’t text and drive” campaign for State Farm and engineering a gaming app for Microsoft.
Kim McGrigg, spokeswoman for Junior Achievement, said Business Week uses hands-on experience to connect students with the real world.
“The thing that I like the most is that everything that we learn we apply to each project that we do,” Manning said. “And when you apply it, you obviously come out a winner.”
Manning was one of the members of the winning team for the Microsoft challenge.
For each of the projects, students had to develop a marketing strategy, design a budget, create ways to measure the results and present to a panel of judges. The winners of the Jamba Juice challenge will have their “Big Bang Berry” flavor in all metro-area locations and will receive 20 percent of the smoothie’s sales.
Robin Wise, president of Junior Achievement Rocky Mountain, said she believes students today need to think in an entrepreneurial way to succeed.
“We know that 81 percent of the kids that drop out of school, they drop out because nobody has made the connection between learning and their skills,” Wise said.
Laurelle Kinga, 16, said that after Business Week, she is considering a career in business and plans to attend again next year.
To attend, students paid a participation fee of $250, though more than half got financial assistance, McGrigg said.
The cost of room and board was covered by the event’s sponsors.
“It is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to experience leadership and business,” McGrigg said.
