Insight_Inaugural Edition

STEVE J. MARIOTTI Founder, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Princeton, NJ In 1988, Steve Mariotti founded the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) from his public school classroom and grew it into a worldwide movement aimed at lifting students out of poverty through entrepreneurship. Today, Mr. Mariotti is the chairman of Atlas Learning, the co-founder of Atlas Elite and a fellow at Rising Tide Capital. Acknowledged as an expert educator for low-income individuals, Mr. Mariotti was an attendee at The World Economic Forum in Davos for nine years, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Affairs. He has spoken on entrepreneurship and small business startup as an exit strategy from poverty more than 300 times in 19 countries. There have been more than 10,000 media pieces on NFTE, with an estimated 500 million media impressions globally. NFTE counts more than one million young people in its network of alumni entrepreneurs, and was the subject of the film, “Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon.” A prolific writer, Mr. Mariotti’s work has been published more than 400 times by the Huffington Post. Additionally, he recently released a best-selling memoir, “Goodbye Homeboy: How My Students Drove Me Crazy and Inspired a Movement.” How have you navigated disruptions in your industry to remain a top professional? I have had a lot of support and many mentors along the way, but one very important lesson comes to mind. I was fortunate enough to be raised in the city of Flint, Michigan, the heart of the auto industry and home of General Motors. There, the legendary leader of GM, Alfred P. Sloan taught us that change is constant. You must always be ready for change — in markets, in