Hancock County CEO Students Selected for National Trade Show
Aaron Frey
Friday, June 1, 2018 2:03 PM
Campus News
Galesburg, IL
Two students in the Hancock County Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities (CEO) program, Ty Jackson of Illini West High School and Molly Conover of Southeastern High School, have been selected to participate in the CEONext National Trade Show this month, with a chance to win a cash prize to go toward the businesses they started.
Jackson and Conover were among 30 CEO students selected to present the businesses they established at the CEONext National Trade Show on June 10 at the Keller Convention Center in Effingham. Judges will award one student $2,500 to be invested back into their business.
CEO is a community-supported, investor-funded class for high school students that currently involves 168 schools in 39 communities across four states. Students in the Hancock County CEO program, which is completing its third year, earn dual credit toward Carl Sandburg College.
CEO equips students with the soft skills to work within a group setting and develop a class business during the first semester. Students then start and run their own enterprise during the second semester while cultivating essential sales, marketing, financial and administrative skills with the support of a CEO facilitator and local community business mentors. The program guides students through starting and running their own functioning business, all while cultivating essential skills and an expansive, long-lasting network of community members and business owners.
The CEONext National Trade Show is the culmination of a business, economic development, and academic collaboration administered by the Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship — which serves as a resource for all CEO programs — to teach and to promote the development of 21st-century skills of problem solving, teamwork, self-motivation, responsibility, higher-order thinking, communication and imagination. To learn more, visit www.midlandinstitute.com.