Tampa school launches entrepreneurship institute, seeks to hire director

Traditionally speaking, students grow up attending school and start their professional careers after graduating high school or college. 

These days, many young minds aren’t waiting that long. 

YouTuber Ryan Kaji from Texas was earning $10 million by age six reviewing toys on his channel Ryan’s World according to Forbes, to cite one example. Now at age 12, he makes $35 million and has his own line of toys and other videos to entertain millions of subscribers. Locally, brothers Austin and Grant Gappelberg are pulling in millions with an ice cream business when they’re not taking classes at the University of Tampa. 

In keeping up with the times, Carrollwood Day School, a private school in the Tampa suburbs with students from preschool to high school and annual tuition up to $30,000, recently launched its Entrepreneurship Institute.

“It is the program that is absolutely right for our school, and certainly is a big underpinning force for all that we do here,” says Tim Walsh, assistant head of school academics. Walsh has been with CDS for four years, and in his current role for two. CDS has more than 1,200 students.

He explains that while all schools at CDS (lower, middle and upper) have entrepreneurial programs, they tend to be siloed. “They're all kind of little islands of great entrepreneurial thinking. But we didn't have any joining that was happening,” Walsh says. “One of my roles is to really champion those things that are going well episodically in different parts of the building, like character, like global programs, like especially entrepreneurial thinking, and joining that up into a coherent program.” 

Follow the leader

With the recent launch, the next leg is to find someone to lead the institute. The challenge there is to find the right person for a job that is a little nontraditional in an academic setting. 

“We want to be an incubator here, and we want to have pitch competitions here. We want to have kids have their own businesses, and then when they start making money in their own businesses, we want to teach them how to invest that money,” Walsh says. “So how's this going to happen? We need to hire a director for entrepreneurship.”

The director of entrepreneurship will, among other things, develop the program which has plenty of room to grow; cultivate relationships with local businesses so that students can gain real world internship experience; and also teach up to two class sections. With that in mind, the right fit could be someone who owned or managed a business, a c-suite leader or an educator who has experience in business. 

“It's not a one size fits all. We need someone who's a really good connector, though, one who's entrepreneurial themselves and has an entrepreneurial mindset themselves,” Walsh says. 

Above all, he’s considering the students. “The most important thing I do is hire great teachers,” he says, noting everyone has likely endured a bad teacher in their lives and it can tarnish the whole academic experience.

He’s here to back up faculty and leadership as well. “I think the biggest push from my office is to make sure our teachers also feel well equipped to help students along this pathway too, because it's not standing up in front of the chalkboard stuff we're doing anymore,” he says. 

Make it better

As an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School, students at CDS are supposed to gain knowledge, but there is more of a focus on inquiry and thinking like an entrepreneur. Walsh stresses that it's acceptable for students to try and fail and finesse different strategies and ideas. 

Some students are already at work. Walsh cites one student forging the path for CDS to earn a Florida green school designation, which includes several moving parts like an application process and transferring food waste to a local garden. “There will be a future here where we grow our own food here at least in some cases,” Walsh says, “And that's all going to be due to the people who are thinking about, ‘How can we make this better?’”

Ultimately Walsh believes this will be great for local businesses too, since the locals will have first dibs at encouraging and shaping young minds through avenues like guest speakers and mentorship opportunities. “If businesses have a connection with a school like ours, there's an opportunity to build a relationship where they may end up with great employees, [or] they may end up just with a great relationship with our school.”