What if you could learn alongside a proven CEO and founder in an industry you were curious about? Imagine learning about finance, sales & marketing, & product development through direct application on a daily basis. Would you learn more than studying these disciplines in college?
Could this be a viable solution for the much publicized skills gap that learners and employers are experiencing to power the 21st century economy?
Well, I discuss the apprenticeship model with Shaila Ittycheria, co-founder of Enstitute. Don’t miss it!
Guest Bio:
Shaila Ittycheria made a decision at 18 that changed her life. Frustrated with the lack of business focused opportunities, coupled with the exorbitant tuition costs, she dropped out of the elite
Middlebury college and enrolled at Arizona State University. She pursued as many experiential learning opportunities she could get her hands on, including writing her thesis in collaboration with Intel. That experience landed her a job at Microsoft, first in a finance leadership development program to then running her own M&A deals. After receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School, Shaila worked to establish herself in the NYC startup scene. Interestingly, it wasn’t the degree that opened up doors, but rather her experience working at recently launched BirchBox, which led her to LocalResponse, where she ran the half of the company focused on small business solutions.
For Shaila, Enstitute is a solution that provides opportunities she wished she had when she was younger, coupled with the problems that she witnessed first hand as a hiring manager: graduates lack the critical thinking, problem solving, and reasoning skills they need to be successful in the workplace and they do not have any substantial experience that illustrates their potential. Rather than letting the name of an academic institution define someone’s worth, Shaila hopes to build a system that maximizes human capital potential by focusing on skill based knowledge, developed competencies, and proven work experience.
Shaila has been named a 2013 Echoing Green Fellow and a 2012 Francis Hesselbein Institute NEXT Leader of the Future. She speaks often on education, learning by doing, and workforce development and has also been featured in The New York Times, PBS,Forbes Magazine, CNN, The Huffington Post, and Fast Company.
Show Notes:
(2:02) Shaila’s story
(16:15) What is Enstitute?
(19:52) What is the commitment for an employer?
(24:39) What is your vision for the apprenticeship model from a scale perspective?
(28:59) What about the culture shift to acceptance of new models like this one?
(35:04) If you could have dinner with one person you admire, past or present, who would it be and why?
* Grandparents
* Sir Ken Robinson
(37:14) How to contact and support Enstitute
For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.