Millennium Magazine_2ndEd

18 MILLENNIUM-SECOND EDITION years to serve students whose schools had no entrepreneurship programs during the academic year. For 12 years, he did teacher trainings in order to certify instructors to deliver the 60-hour NFTE program, and more than 11,000 teachers have been certified worldwide. He ran an alumni group of NFTE graduates for 30 years. Mr. Mariotti has spoken on entrepreneurship and small business startup as an exit strategy frompovertymore than 300 times in 19 countries. There have been over 10,000 media pieces on NFTE, with an estimated 500 million media impressions globally. NFTE was the subject of the film “Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon.” Mr. Mariotti began his career as an international financial analyst on the legendary Finance staff of the Ford Motor Company from 1977 to 1979, serving as both the Treasury analyst for Ford South Africa and for Ford Latin America. Afterward, he founded and served as CEO of Mason Import-Export (1980-1982). Then, he had a revelation and — in an abrupt change of career —became a special education teacher in the New York City public school system, working with at- risk, low-income children from 1982 to 1988. In addition to his teaching duties, Mr. Mariotti co- founded Inmates Teaching Entrepreneurship and Mentoring (ITEM) in 2004, which demonstrates to prison inmates how they can start their own businesses when they are released. Prior to launching his professional career, Mr. Mariotti S teve J. Mariotti founded the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) in 1988. Since 2015, he has been the chairman of the board of Atlas Learning Inc., an educational production company producing books videos and documentaries on how low income people can become better entrepreneurs. In addition, since 2017, he has been a fellow at Rising Tide Capital, Inc. More than one million young people have graduated from NFTE programs using the entrepreneurship education curriculum developed by Mr. Mariotti and his team. NFTE operates programs in 22 U.S. states and in South Africa, Ireland, Israel, Belgium, China, the Netherlands, Germany, India and the United Kingdom, with new programs slated for the West Bank and New Zealand. NFTE’s partner in China won a contest for the best youth program in the country and was featured on the Chinese national television station. In the 1980’s for six-and-a-half years, Mr. Mariotti taught the prototype entrepreneurial programs full time, including holding night classes for seniors and their grandchildren. After founding NFTE in 1987, he became chairman of the board and president of NFTE building teams that raised over 200 million dollars during the next 27 years. Mr. Mariotti always made time to be a teacher for his the students. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, he conducted two-week summer BizCamps™ for six STEVE J. MARIOTTI FOUNDER Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Princeton, NJ