Morehouse College in Atlanta came in as the top team in a Charlotte, North Carolina, entrepreneurship competition.
Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund teamed up once again to host the fourth-annual Moguls in the Making at the Ally Charlotte Center Sept. 15-18. It was created in 2019 to offer a spotlight for students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to pitch their ideas on improving economic mobility.
Ally and TMCF chose 60 students from 15 HBCUs, with four students representing each school. Each member from the top-three winning teams won $20,000, $10,000 and $5,000 in scholarships, plus paid internship offers from Ally.
Each of the four students in the winning Morehouse team receiving a $20,000 scholarship. The team’s winning idea pitched to a panel of judges centered around solutions to challenges within the housing industry. Morgan State University in Baltimore took second place, with its students winning $10,000 scholarships. Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, landed in third place as its four students took home $5,000 scholarships.
Ally CEO Jeffrey Brown says the program is a key way to not only help grow the students as individuals but also to foster the company’s culture.
“I’m a big believer as a CEO that you can learn from anyone,” he told CBJ. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO. So this was a way of empowering different thinking into our company.”
Ally is also the lead sponsor of the University Growth Fund, a $50 million venture capital fund managed by students and supervised by a management team. That fund has an office in Atlanta, specifically to reach Atlanta University Center students, an executive told Atlanta Inno in 2021.
Since Moguls in the Making launched in 2019, Ally has hired 36 of the students as interns and 12 as full-time employees. The participants work in teams across the company in careers such as IT and marketing to product design and software development. Ally has awarded about $356,000 in scholarships since the program was formed, not including this year’s winners.
“And I remember saying, 'Is anyone else doing this?' And it was, 'no,'” Brown said. “And I loved it because it was an opportunity to do something different and to get (a) different style (of) thinking and bring in diverse talent.”
Brown said every student that attended the 2022 competition will receive a minimum of $1,000 in scholarships.
“A lot of these individuals, HBCUs, they produce tremendous talent but they often don't get the big-time corporate visibility,” Brown said. “We're trying to create that pipeline and let other corporations take notice and I'm so proud of this program.”
Another purpose of the program is to instill financial literacy in individuals at an early age. Brown says it’s important to implement that in diverse populations and help them manage their financial lives. Charlotte-area business leaders and coaches from Ally took part in the event to answer students' questions about finances or other economic issues facing the nation.
Celebrities Big Sean and Terrence J, who is a 2004 graduate of N.C. A&T State University — a HBCU — and a North Carolina native, joined the event and celebrated the students' work. Last year’s winning idea came from N.C. A&T and focused on a new way to generate power locally to lower electric bill costs.
“It’s not all about what we can give in terms of education to these 60 young women and young men,” Brown said. “It's how they can educate us. How they can help us move the needle on our thinking and embrace broader, more diverse perspectives. And I think that's what really creates the tremendous pride and momentum.”
