BW Online | August 31, 2001 | A Crash Course in Business for Minority Students

AUGUST 31, 2001

B-SCHOOL NEWS

A Crash Course in Business for Minority Students
At LEAD, minority high schoolers get an intensive experience at top B-schools -- and eventually, entree to Corporate America

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Outside of Goldman Sachs' New York headquarters, Ricardo Franco and Horace Ballard rehearse a stock-research presentation that kept them up until 4 that morning. But Franco and Ballard aren't junior analysts -- they're juniors in high school. And although their investment group's $100,000 portfolio grew 3% over three bearish weeks, they don't get to pocket the cash.

The money Franco and Ballard's group made is fake, but their stock-picking success was for real. Their track record reflects the business knowhow they acquired through a summer program at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. They were among 30 students heading into their senior years in high school who were visiting New York City with Wharton's LEAD (short for Leadership Education & Development) program. The intensive five-week course targets talented minority students to expose them to the ways of business.

The goal is to shatter any myths among the younger set that business isn't a place for minorities. "[LEAD] is creating the opportunity for the students to see themselves in these positions," says LEAD entrepreneurship teacher Jacqueline Jenkins, president of the Philadelphia-based staffing-solution company Add-Value-Day-1. Founded at Wharton in 1980, LEAD has sent more than 5,000 high-schoolers to programs at 11 top B-schools in the U.S. Along with Wharton, Dartmouth, Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, Arizona, UCLA, Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, and Texas have all signed on. Cornell University plans to participate next summer.

CURRICULUM SAMPLER. As its earliest alumni -- now in their mid-30s -- just start to crack the ranks of upper-level management, this is a crucial time for LEAD. Of America's 1,000 largest corporations, only 41% have at least one African-American board member, according to a 2000 Korn/Ferry International survey. LEAD National President Garvey Clarke says the home office in New York is making its first attempts at formalizing its ever-growing alumni network. Clarke hopes LEAD can widen its pipeline into Corporate America -- and keep it filled with top-flight B-school grads.

That's why the LEAD program doesn't just teach the students how to sound Wall Street-smart. B-school profs and visiting businesspeople give the students a crash-course version of an undergraduate business education, with daily lectures on everything from finance to entrepreneurship to marketing. The LEADers get to see theory become practice on visits to any one of 28 sponsoring companies around the country, including two of LEAD's earliest partners, Goldman Sachs and Johnson & Johnson.

Administrators also want this taste of B-school curriculum to draw more minorities to their undergraduate programs. More than a quarter of the African Americans enrolled at Wharton are alumni from various LEAD programs. By the spring of 2003, Wharton will have graduated 368 LEAD alumni. At schools like Cornell and Dartmouth, where encouraging minority applicants is a yearly struggle, administrators relish the opportunity for an exclusive college sneak preview. John Vogel, faculty director of Dartmouth College's Tuck School LEAD program, says each year the school aims to sway at least five of its summer LEADers to attend Dartmouth. Of the 30 participants that attended this summer's program in Hanover, N.H., over 20 interviewed with admissions officers.

CORPORATE TIES. Prospective LEADers apply to a central pool and are placed in one of the programs around the country if they make the cut. The LEAD National Office covers travel and application fees for the students, but each B-school has to raise cash for tuition and room and board. Clarke estimates that each B-school's LEAD program can cost as much as $100,000 per session. While most schools offset expenses through corporate sponsorships, cash concerns can mean LEAD doesn't run at every school every year -- trouble financing the program led Columbia University to halt its summer sessions in 1999.

Other B-schools also offer summer programs for minority high school students. The University of Connecticut runs a program for minority teens interested in business, and Lehigh University offers high schoolers insights into the business world through its Iacocca Institute and other university programs. But LEAD has carved out a unique niche, and the program is selective when it picks the schools it works with. Top-tier schools are best, Clarke says, because they offer students the opportunity to break into tremendous career networks.

And the program's corporate links have likewise proven significant. Goldman Sachs currently employs nine LEAD alumni, including Richard Wayman, vice-president of Goldman's Investment Banking Div. Over a catered lunch in July, LEAD alumna Nia Gandy -- a high-yield research associate -- spoke to students about the impact LEAD had on her own career. "If you don't have corporate executives in your family," she said, "all you know [about career choices] is what you see on TV." LEAD points out the alternatives, Gandy says.

NO HOLIDAY. Make no mistake, though: With its challenging coursework and intensive schedule, the LEAD program is no Camp Sunshine. After visiting Goldman's trading floors, student teams presented the results of their three-week stock-picking competition to the firm's analysts. Second-year analyst Keith Bernard -- a Michigan LEAD alumnus -- oversaw the project and was impressed with the students' comfort with consumer cyclicals and company acquisitions. "I don't remember knowing that much [in high school]," says Bernard. "They could have sat down at my desk [to do my job]."

That's the idea. "The most important part of LEAD is seeing people of color doing well," says Goldman summer analyst Rodney Smith, a sophomore at Wharton and a LEAD alum. For Smith, and other talented minority students, seeing is believing.

By Brian Hindo in New York

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