Eighteen years with one organization I keep choosing to serve.

The organization

A national nonprofit that teaches roughly thirty-five thousand students a year to build and run real businesses inside their schools. They raise capital, hire, market, sell and close the books. It is one of the few educational programs that treats young people as operators, and it has held my attention for eighteen years.

I joined in 2008 as an in-class volunteer and student mentor. In 2010 I joined the board as an independent director and have served ever since, more than a decade of that on the executive committee and as chair of both Audit and Strategy.

Financial oversight

As Audit Chair I supported the implementation of an enterprise risk management framework, led the review of the annual financial audits, and set board-level discipline over financial controls and oversight.

Coaching senior leadership

Beyond formal governance, I have spent years as a coach and sounding board to the executive director, the CFO and other members of the leadership team. That work shows up in how the team frames growth, sets goals and measures outcomes.

Long-range strategy

As Strategy Chair I led development of a multi-year strategic plan with the executive team, and we keep it current instead of filing it. The objective is serving more students each year than the year before without giving up what those students get.

Leadership continuity

I have served through multiple executive director transitions and through financial gaps that required direct board intervention.

Governance and innovation

Most recently I helped shape an AI-enabled approach to how student work is evaluated at scale.

Why I still serve

It shows up as an organization that holds together through hard transitions and makes better decisions than it did before.

Students learn to lead by building and running something real, with consequences. I started with VEI in 2008 as a classroom volunteer and student mentor and joined the board two years later. Eighteen years later I still serve because I know the organization, I believe in what it does for students, and I can still be useful to the people running it.