Kevin Gadd is a serial entrepreneur (and self-identified serial learner), retired Air Force Chief, and the Ohio Program Manager for Apprenti. In this episode, Kevin helps us unbox the role of entrepreneurship in education and the intersection between teaching, learning, and work.

The problem with entrepreneurship education is that, until very recently, we have been trying to teach entrepreneurship like math or history: we’d get an outdated book and put students in a class, then if we were getting ambitious, we might have them design a business plan using online software. It was nonfunctional, and it didn’t really match what happened in the real world.

Programs like Apprenti, however, serve as a better model for entrepreneurship education. It is the nation’s first registered IT apprenticeship program, and its goal is to train future tech workers, with an emphasis on underrepresented groups including women, minorities, and veterans. Once trained, these new IT workers join a yearlong apprenticeship program to ensure their success in finding the next piece of their journey.

We unbox:

• Launching a program to teach entrepreneurs, at home and abroad
• The outdated ways people have tried to teach entrepreneurship in the past – and how we can more effectively teach entrepreneurship in the future
• The misunderstanding of where entrepreneurship fits in the world
• Mentoring female entrepreneurs in the Middle East
• It’s okay to fail, as long as the outcome is learning
• How reframing what an entrepreneur is – a problem solver, a solution provider, a community organizer, a leader, self-employed – makes it more appealing and approachable
• Diversity is important; you can’t be what you can’t see
• At the same time, you can’t do what you don’t know, so there has to be applied opportunity
• What Apprenti looks like in practice

Resources:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chiefgadd
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/chiefgadd
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiefgadd/
• Learn more about Apprenti: https://apprenticareers.org/

Learning Unboxed is produced in part by Crate Media

Recorded by Eric French at WOSU Studios in Columbus, Ohio