Meet Anna Leer | Vice President of YouthBiz with Young Americans Center for Financial Education

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anna Leer and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anna, what is the most important factor behind your success?
YouthBiz is, at its heart, dedicated to empowering young people with financial literacy and self-sufficiency. The process of transforming a young person’s perception of their own financial power is a cornerstone of the YouthBiz mission. This laser focus on the experience of the youth we serve, I believe is the most important factor behind the success of YouthBiz. We work very hard to check our egos at the door, so to speak, in order to be in complete service of our students. This materializes in many different ways, from providing individualized business coaching sessions to trusting teachers to know the best ways to reach their students. However, my mantra in building and growing this program is always, “What’s best for the kids?” In most cases, the answer is to be an unwavering form of support, education, and resource allocation so that the youth we serve are able to shine.

In all of the programs we run, both our direct-to-consumer programming and our in-school programming, we strive to continuously provide a service that is “in service” of our students. We want all students we serve, whether they seek us out for help with their business or whether the program is just part of a class at school, to gain a sense of confidence and empowerment from participating. We acknowledge that every student is not going to grow into an adult entrepreneur, but we fiercely believe that every student can grow into a confident, critically thinking, enterprising adult, and that experiencing entrepreneurship programming through YouthBiz can help them get there.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
YouthBiz, Inc. was a stand alone nonprofit formed in 1992 by a group of teens and a community leader in the Five Points Community. The mission of the organization was always to empower young people through the principles of entrepreneurship. Although the program and implementation have changed a great deal over the years, this mission has remained unchanged. In 2015, we restructured the curriculum to be a scalable, turnkey program that teachers could implement in their classrooms as a fun and engaging way to cover over a dozen educational standards. This model presents the program in a way that is different from all other entrepreneurship programs available. The YouthBiz program is completely turnkey—all materials, workbooks, lessons, and slides are included so teachers have little to no preparation before beginning—while also providing structured, logically sequenced entrepreneurship content for students to understand. The program is highly interactive and comes with a $100 prize for the business team that wins the culminating business pitch competition at the end of the program. This combination of features and benefits is what allows us to differentiate ourselves from competitors. There are currently no other experiential entrepreneurship programs for middle and high school aged students that can easily be facilitated by teachers in a reasonable time frame, and none that also come with a built-in financial incentive for student engagement.

In 2022, YouthBiz expects to serve over 3,000 students around Colorado. In 2014, we served 127 students. This exponential growth did not come easily, but is the result of a lot of hard work and a stubborn faith in the power of the programs we provide. In 2016, most teachers were uninterested in entrepreneurship education for their students, favoring workforce readiness education instead and assuming the two were mutually exclusive. Six years, constant work to prove program credibility, a pandemic, and a shift in state standards later, teachers are much more receptive to entrepreneurship education as a necessary skillset for their students. After six years of hustling, teachers have begun to finally recognize that entrepreneurship education instills an entrepreneurial mindset in students, which includes problem solving skills, effective collaboration skills, salesmanship skills, and self-awareness, all of which have a strong correlation to future success in the workplace. Teachers, schools, youth development organizations, and even districts are now reaching out to YouthBiz for programming.

Throughout this growth trajectory, there have been numerous lessons learned. Most importantly for any organization undergoing dynamic growth is to create a sustainable foundation that can support intense growth. In our case, that meant slowing down at certain points in order to establish systems that would allow us to continuously provide the best quality service and programming to all teachers and students. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to consciously slow growth to establish the infrastructure that will ensure continued growth can be maintained with the highest quality of service. The next, and most unexpected, lesson was learned during the pandemic when, like millions of others, our operations were instantly halted. Again, like millions of others across the world, we pivoted almost immediately. We started developing digital facilitation options for our teachers, e-commerce alternatives for our young entrepreneurs, and virtual classes to replace the workshops we host. We realized that we could not tell our students to think entrepreneurially if we weren’t prepared to do it ourselves, so that’s what we did. We worked tirelessly, creating new content using new platforms and learning about new ways to engage students virtually. Many jobs were on the line, and that burden was considerable. It was a very stressful time, as it was for most. However, as schools started to come back in person, there was an emerging demand for virtual and hybrid resources, even though teachers and students were in person. Teachers wanted ways to eliminate paper as much as possible, and the digital tools we had created easily solved that problem. It was a good reminder to treat every challenge like an opportunity, another adage we constantly tell our students.

I’d like the world to know that an entrepreneurial mindset is helpful in any career a student chooses to pursue, and the earlier they learn to develop and practice using that entrepreneurial mindset, the better. The YouthBiz program offers an easy way for teachers and youth providers to expose young people to this entrepreneurial mindset in a safe, fun and risk-free way. However, any way to allow youth to practice critical thinking and problem solving is going to benefit not only the students, but the economy as a whole.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
This exact scenario has happened dozens of times since I’ve been in Denver, but planning for guests never gets old! As a typical Coloradoan, I’m a nut for outdoor activities, regardless of the time of year. In the summer, I like taking out of town guests to Waterton Canyon because the scenery is gorgeous, but the terrain is easy for sea level natives. We also love to take guests to play the par 3 Harvard Gulch course and then walk to Denver Beer Co afterward for refreshments. In the winter, it’s all about the mountains, so we take all our visitors up to our ski condo in Frisco where we can downhill ski, nordic ski, fat bike, snow shoe, or just explore the shops with a hot cup of coffee. Food is very important to my husband and I so we meticulously curate a restaurant itinerary tailored to each guest. Some of our favorite spots are Ash’Kara in the Highlands, ZOMO in Englewood, Sushi Den on South Pearl Street, and The Plimoth in City Park. For a more casual vibe, we love The Post Chicken and Beer in Rosedale and Park Burgers around the city. Favorite breweries are probably Denver Beer Co and Epic Brewing in Denver, and Outer Range Brewery in Frisco. Now who wants to come visit?

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many people who have been instrumental in the growth and development of the YouthBiz program, and I am grateful to all of them. However, I do want to thank the members of our temporary Board of Managers that was assembled in 2015 when YouthBiz was in talks to be acquired by Young Americans Center. All participating members of this board worked together to think big, daring to brainstorm what could be. I’m forever grateful for the insights, intelligence, and confidence they instilled in me as we laid the foundation for the new YouthBiz that would impact thousands.

Website: yacenter.org/youthbiz

Instagram: @yacenter

Linkedin: YoungAmericansCenterForFinancialEducation

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YoungAmericans