The Youth Foundry helps young people build real businesses, real wealth, and a legacy of their own.
Ages 14 to 24 · Palm Beach County, FL
A free community wide pitch competition for young founders ages 14 to 21 in Palm Beach County. Cash prizes, tuition awards, and a real stage to pitch your idea. Solo founders welcome. Idea stage welcome.
Every program, every partner, and every seat we open flows from two beliefs about what young people deserve.
Young founders. Connected communities. Generational legacy.
A world where every young person has access to the opportunities, tools, and knowledge to build real wealth and a future of their own.
These are not posters on a wall. They are the operating principles behind every cohort, every open seat, and every pitch competition we run.
The Youth Foundry runs a two semester founder program. Start with IGNITE in the fall, then build on it with FORGE in the spring. In Year One, each level is offered on its own.
The entry point into The Youth Foundry. Students take an idea and turn it into a real, investor ready business concept, finishing the semester by pitching at a live competition.
The next level for founders who completed IGNITE. Students take their concept further, sharpen the business, and keep building toward something real and lasting.
I've spent five years watching high school students pitch business ideas to rooms full of real entrepreneurs and walking away with something no classroom grade can measure. Confidence. Vision. The belief that their ideas are worth building.
I'm a credentialed marketing and entrepreneurship educator, a DECA founding advisor, and a Certiport Subject Matter Expert whose work has shaped national certification standards. I've helped students earn hundreds of industry credentials and coached them through competitions at the district, state, and national level. But the moment I keep coming back to isn't a trophy or a certificate. It's the look on a student's face when they realize they are capable of more than anyone told them.
That moment is why I built The Youth Foundry.
I also know what it means to be a smart, driven person without the right tools, environment, or support. I was undiagnosed with ADHD until I was 40 years old. I spent decades feeling like I was not keeping up in a world that was not designed for the way my brain worked. I watched my son navigate the same invisible struggle, and then watched a system fail him catastrophically when he needed it most.
Those experiences did not break me. They made me the educator I am. They are why I do not just teach entrepreneurship. I find the potential in students that is waiting to be activated, and I build the structure around them to help them actually launch.
The Youth Foundry is a nonprofit because this work was never about profit. It is about what happens when a young person finally has the environment, the mentors, and the community that the system never gave them. Students work alongside local business leaders, develop real ideas, and leave with skills, networks, and momentum that follow them into college and beyond.
Young founders. Connected communities. Generational legacy.
The best measure of this work is what students say about it. More stories are on the way as our founders share their experiences.
Your teaching inspired me to be the best version of myself and think outside the box! You always believe in your students and that encourages us to reach our full potential inside and outside the classroom.
The Shark Tank experience encouraged me to feel more confident in myself and my ability to come up with ideas, and that if an idea isn't perfect then it's okay to go back to the drawing board and come up with something different.
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