CEOs: Growing up the next generation of world class leaders

By MELISSA CROCKETT MESKE
[email protected]

Craig Lindvahl probably never imagined that his own personal ponderings of life’s lessons would one day grow into an indelible legacy. 

Throughout his three-plus decades of teaching, Lindvahl repeatedly asked his students, and himself, “Who will be better because of what I’m doing today?” 

His daily practice of empowering others gently but impactfully by freely respecting, and carefully listening, touched thousands of lives before becoming what is known today as the CEO Program.

Launched from Effingham, Ill., today’s broadscaped CEO Program got its start as one localized group, with Lindvahl as its facilitator and 20 local high schoolers participating. 

This first CEO group, in true entrepreneurial spirit, tried and failed, and tried again. They thrived and survived by getting out of their classrooms and into their community. They connected with local business leaders, partnered up with assigned mentors, and owned up to the work they were given to do. It was this group of students with Lindvahl that found a fitting name for what they were doing as well: “Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities.” 

In 2008, with an official identity then in place, the foundation for what is now a leading entrepreneurial training ground for high schoolers from all over was formed. The Midland Institute of Entrepreneurship was launched one year later to support the rapid expansion of the CEO Program to additional communities. 

“Lindvahl and his students found that they had created something incredibly powerful. The students who completed this program had tasted real life, and they were completely changed. There was no textbook, so they had to think out of the box – in a way that they didn’t have to do in school. They became the ones to guide the learning, and the result was extraordinary,” noted the Midland Institute.

Lindvahl passed away in 2020 after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer, but he had remained active in the Midland Institute’s CEO program operations as long as he could, offering guidance, wisdom, and direction to its growing team. 

His vision has now become a legacy that lives on through the young entrepreneurial minds and spirits harvested year after year from this distinctive training ground. Today, the CEO Program has grown into 56 communities in six different states. Thousands of students have gone through the program, and still more have been impacted by its foundational pillars.

Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities, or CEO, is an academic-year-long course designed to utilize local synergistic partnerships to provide an overview of business development and processes. Local business and industry (B&I) leaders and mentors partner with area public, private and home schools and identify secondary education students to participate and learn from the CEO program’s project-based experiences. These CEO B&I partners and mentors are volunteers, freely engaging the students in real-world exercises as entrepreneurs while also providing funding, meeting space, business tours, one-on-one mentoring and further sharing their expertise.

Throughout the year, participating CEO students visit area businesses, learn from guest speakers, develop and operate a class business, write business plans, as well as start and operate their own businesses. 

Concepts learned through the experiential CEO class are industry-current and applicable, with a focus on entrepreneurial and workplace skills such as problem-solving, teamwork, self-motivation, responsibility, higher-order thinking, communication, and curiosity. 

A focus on these skills remains at the heart of a student’s development throughout the time they spend in the CEO program.

CEO students are selected for participation through a rigorous application process. Meeting for 90 minutes each weekday, they utilize area businesses as their classrooms, also visiting anywhere from 30 to 50 area businesses during the year and hosting 30 to 40 guest speakers.

Midland Institute nonprofit staffers help with the launch a local CEO program, but once its roots are firmly planted, it becomes completely driven by the locals. A local board of business and industry leaders administers the program and carries out activities to benefit its learners. Funding comes through financial and in-kind investments by local businesses and entities. 

Katie Sabolo facilitates the local Riverbend CEO program. She is a business instructor at Marquette Catholic High School in Alton. The Riverbend CEO program was introduced in 2015, and Sabolo has led it since its beginning. Students from public, private and home-based high schools including Alton, Marquette Catholic, Bethalto’s Civic Memorial, and East Alton-Wood River are selected each year to participate. There are 12 students in the Riverbend CEO Class of 2024.

“Riverbend CEO is an investor-funded entrepreneurship program that connects local high school seniors to businesses in our community. CEO gives students an incredible opportunity to start their own businesses and network with other business professionals in our community. Each year, students tour more than 30 local businesses and meet with 30 guest speakers to help them learn the ins and outs of running a business,” Sabolo recently shared. “While learning about businesses in our area, students launch their own small businesses with a product or service they market to the community at our annual Trade Show.” The Riverbend CEO Trade Show is held at the end of each school year, most recently in May 2023 and wrapping up the group’s seventh year. 

This entrepreneurship education program is designed to prepare people, and especially youth, to be responsible, enterprising individuals who become entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial thinkers and contribute to economic development and sustainable communities. The CEO program “is much more than simply a textbook course,” as Sabolo noted. “Students are immersed in real life learning experiences with the opportunity to take risks, manage the results, and learn from the outcomes.”

Regionally throughout southwestern Illinois, there are six established CEO programs, with still more nearby and with interest continuing to grow. These six include:

• Belleville – Julie Siebers, facilitator;
• Bond County – Amanda Dussold, facilitator;
• Clinton County;
• Collinsville/Triad/Maryville – Lisa Colon, facilitator;
• Edwardsville – Hannah Allison, facilitator;
• and Riverbend – Katie Sabolo, facilitator.

For more information about the CEO programs in each area or to reach out to a facilitator and find out how you can help, visit the Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship’s website, https://www.midlandinstitute.com/.

 

This story also appears in the November 2023 print edition of the Illinois Business Journal, accompanied by corporate logos from some of the business and industry partners who proudly displayed their support of the region’s CEO programs.