Cooperation, Collaboration, and Building a Better Tomorrow: Bringing Leaders Together at the Quarterly Roundtable

To help create scalable tech startups throughout rural Southern Oklahoma, it is necessary to build an ecosystem that will support them, and building this ecosystem helps the Ada Jobs Foundation promote a vibrant community and a prosperous local economy. This is one of the main purposes of the Quarterly Roundtables hosted by the Ada Jobs Foundation. When the Ada Jobs Foundation was awarded the EDA Build to Scale Venture Challenge grant in 2021, one of the necessary elements was to reach out to the ten counties services under the grant: Pontotoc, Johnston, Murray, Garvin, Coal, Atoka, Bryan, Carter, Love, and Marshall. This outreach was important to find future tech entrepreneurs, but, just as important was to develop a network of individuals and organizations who could help support these budding entrepreneurs; in other words, we had to build a ten-county tech entrepreneurship ecosystem from scratch.

Conduit Initiative Staff Visit Upward Bound

What happened?

On June 7^th and 8^th, three members of the Ada Jobs Foundation Conduit Initiative staff, Matt Stephens, Sunnie Dawn Baker, and Jake Cantrell, met with 19 high school students from the Upward Bound 2 program to introduce them to entrepreneurship. Stephens focused on the entrepreneurial spirit, Baker led the students in an activity to brainstorm possible businesses, focusing on finding solutions to problems, and Cantrell talked to the students about a good elevator pitch. They left the students with an assignment to come up with their own elevator pitches and Stephens, Baker, and Cantrell will return in two weeks to judge the pitches and teach the students more about entrepreneurship.

Why it Matters

Most schools do not have the capacity to teach entrepreneurship to their students. This outreach on behalf of AJF can help fill that gap, giving these students the tools they need to think entrepreneurially while also providing information that can help them fulfill their goals in a practical way. The sessions on June 7^th and 8^th are only the first of many to come, as the Conduit staff plan on expanding on their curriculum to eventually have a module that can be distributed to schools throughout the area.

The City of Ada has contracted with Freese and Nichols to create a current Housing Assessment and develop neighborhood plans in Ada. As part of this effort, several sessions for public engagement have been scheduled for Wednesday, June 21^st, with a session open to the general public from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. All of the meetings will take place at the Arts and Heritage Center, 400 South Rennie Avenue. More information can be found on the City of Ada’s Facebook page:

Ada Jobs Foundation

580-235-0070

www.growada.com

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