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Erik Michielsen: How can the education system better prepare social entrepreneurs?
Courtney Spence: Well, first of all, I think it's really important to recognize the difference
between someone who is an entrepreneur and someone who has the entrepreneurial spirit.
So what I'm noticing with the team that we're putting together with Students of the World,
everybody is motivated by an entrepreneurial spirit. Everybody is excited by the big challenge
and even the uncertainty and really is finding, you know, excitement and drive and motivation,
not through what are they getting paid or where is their name gonna go on the collateral
or on the website, it's really through this idea of we're creating something that wasn't
there before. Does that mean that everybody that's a part of our organization is an entrepreneur?
Not necessarily. I think that an entrepreneur is someone that in that capacity can help
set leadership and vision but the -- everybody on our team has the entrepreneurial spirit.
So I think there is an importance that is lacking in educational system, and this is
middle school, high school, and college quite frankly, that helps to encourage that entrepreneurial
spirit and that idea of thriving in uncertain times, I mean that's I think the world is
trended that way and I think we all recognize over the course of the last decade that uncertainty
is the only certain thing we have, and the really successful individuals and organizations
are gonna be ones that can thrive through in uncertainty and uncertain times, externally
and internally. And I think that our education system could do more to support whether it's
teenagers going through those uncertain years or whether it's college students preparing
them for when they leave college, those -- there are some massive uncertain years that happen
right after college and most people that I talk to say, "Well, no one told me that this
was gonna happen." So I think that really preparing individuals to find internally the
strength and the courage to get him or her through those tough times, those uncertain
times, will help to foster entrepreneurship in general.