School Introduces Youth To Wall Street By Katherine K. Williams I was into hanging out on the corner more than going to school.... Things changed when I got accepted into the Development School. The first thing I noticed was, when you make a mistake, they don’t judge you. - Esan Ward

 

A school designed to introduce and familiarize young people with a professional work environment has raised about $1 million through its ties with corporate America thanks to two women activists and a former investment banker.

The school, which was recently named the Joseph A. Forgione Development School for Youth, after the former Merrill Lynch and Co.’s chief operating officer of investment banking, who has used his corporate ties to make it the financial success it is, is privately funded and has 50 corporations taking part in its workshops, in its mock job interviews and in sponsoring its internships.

This year, Merrill Lynch executives, led by Forgione, raised about $1 million, some of which the school used to increase its fall semester enrollment to 100 students from its usual 50, thus setting itself up as a clear model for building a bridge between the inner city and corporate America.

The school was cofounded by two African American women in 1997, Lenora Fulani, a youth psychologist who studied at the City University of New York and Pam Lewis, a singer-actress and a one-time winner of an Apollo Theater Talent Show, for leadership training and career education for urban youth ages 16 to 21. The school just celebrated its fourth year of operation, putting the number of students already graduated to 200.

The school, which recruits from 30 high schools in New York and New Jersey, is one of several projects of a 20-year-old charity, the All Stars Project Inc., which was founded by Fred Newman, a philosopher who studied at Stanford University, and Fulani. It teaches the youth how to dress for success and how to conduct themselves in job interviews, and helps them to adjust to the mainstream culture by placing them in an eight-week donor-paid summer internships with companies in finance, advertising, public relations, banking, law, accounting, entertainment, fashion and human resources. Apart from the summer internship, the regular school year runs for two semesters each 12 weeks.

“Regular schools do not teach children how to perform in corporate America,” said Fulani. “Most of our children’s neighborhoods are not integrated, while the business world is dominated by corporate culture. So, when these children come to us, we do mock interviews. We put them in an environment where they are sitting at a table and talking to a top business manager. We teach them to interact with adults professionally and to look them in the eyes.”

Forgione takes the students personally on their tours to the New York Stock Exchange, where students take turns introducing themselves as Wall Street professionals.

“They use performance to get into different types of environments and perform as people who belong there,” Gabrielle Kurlander, president of the All Stars Project told Investment Dealers’ Digest. “They introduce themselves in ways that are not who they are but who they are becoming. It’s a technique to help people do things they have never done before.”

One of the beneficiaries of the Forgione Development School for Youth is 18-year-old Esan Ward, who lives with his mother in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
“I was into hanging out on the corner more than going to school,” Ward said. “Things changed when I got accepted into the Development School. The first thing I noticed was, when you make a mistake, they don’t judge you. You’re encouraged to do better. That gave me confidence. I’ve learned what it means to act, or to ‘perform professionally.’ ”
Ward, who would have dropped out of high school, said he wanted to continue with his studies and go to college.

“Our doors are open to everyone,” said Lewis. “We’re not narrowing the school to that top 10 percent of the student population, we’re looking at the 90 percent who may be considered untalented. We’re looking at the average child who gets average grades.”

Forgione first learned of the All Stars Project Inc. in 1994 from a teenager collecting money for the group.

“We both were from Brooklyn and we both liked baseball and we talked about what the All Stars Project Inc. did for him,” Forgione told Investment Dealers’ Digest in March.

Soon afterwards, Richard Sokolow, an All Stars Inc. board member, invited Forgione to the group’s offices in Greenwich Village, after which Forgione, just about to retire from Merrill Lynch, became a donor and a volunteer. He attracted many of his colleagues and other Wall Street friends to the charity, including Barry Friedberg, an executive vice president at Merrill Lynch and Forgione’s former boss.

“I have enormous respect for Joe and I wanted to be supportive of something that was important to him,” Friedberg told Investment Dealers’ Digest.

Private fund-raising is key to the school’s success, according to Fulani, who in 1996 convinced a small group of Wall Street executives to bridge the gap between Wall Street and poor communities of color by giving money to their development.

She also relies on personal financial donors such as Nathaniel Christian, executive vice president and general counsel of Blaylock & Partners investment firm, who said he knows how persuasive school fund-raisers can be. He said that a telemarketer called him and quickly invited him to visit the school even before Christian could brush the salesman off.
“I saw these well-mannered children in business attire who welcomed me, gave me refreshments and showed me around,” Christian said. “They spoke with poise and they looked forward to the 12 weeks. I was impressed.”

After Fulani lost her 1988 bid for president, she was determined to make a difference and worked with the All Stars Project Inc. youth theater program she had co-founded years before with psychologist Fred Newman with whom she co-founded the Development School for Youth.

Lewis, whose background is in theater became the school’s co-director after working many years for All Stars Project Inc. She studied voice and theater at the University of Kansas and she won first place in a 1984 Apollo Theater Amateur Talent Show.

“I look at this as giving young people the opportunity to learn new performances,” said Lewis. “When they are in the Development School for Youth, they learn how to perform in a corporate environment.”
The school prepared Brooklyn resident Julie Sylvestre, 18, for an internship at AT&T.

“My regular school just focused on academics and getting into a good college,” said Sylvestre. “The Development School for Youth helped me get into the corporate world.”