The Makings of Moguls: A Detroit Crucible for Career Success Entrepreneurs Can Learn
Ally Financial and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund team up to help HBCU students succeed.
What a difference a weekend makes. Each fall for one weekend, 50 students spend 72 hours in 10 teams to discover what it takes to become a mogul. A partnership between Ally Financial and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund’s (TMCF) Innovation and Entrepreneur Program, the Moguls in the Making program looks to find “the best and brightest entrepreneurial minds among Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)” and put them on a path to career success. And it works.
Launched in 2019, Moguls in the Making boasts a stellar roster of alumni who have risen steadily in their careers. To a person, they all credit their experience in the financial weekend crucible. Alumni testimonials cite everything from idea creation to public speaking to teamwork to networking as key elements of their experience. And that’s exactly what the program’s designers intended.
“This is a labor of love. It’s a personal passion,” explains Ally Corporate Citizenship Team Senior Director Natalie Brown, one of the program’s founders. “It’s my way to give back to students on a path that I walked when I was an HBCU student. I’m also the mother of two girls, one who’s in college right now at my alma mater (North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University). Having the opportunity to create a program that helps students gain access, exposure, and opportunity as they pursue their careers is purpose work for me, as it was those three elements that helped me succeed.”
After being selected from an application process, teams work together over a three-day period to develop an innovative solution that supports economic mobility across an industry. Mentors guide the process and speakers and panels provide inspiration and wisdom as the students formulate a business plan and pitch. After extensive practice and teamwork, teams pitch their solutions to a distinguished panel of judges. Those judges select winners based on a robust business rubric and the “best presentation with the most brilliant business solution wins.”
The stakes are high. Each first-place-team member receives a $20,000 scholarship as well as an internship opportunity, a laptop with accessories, other tech prizes, and swag. Second-place-team members each receive $10,000 scholarships as well as a laptop, tech prizes, and swag. Third-place winners receive the same prize package as second-place winners, with each scholarship at $5,000. While it’s easy to focus on the prizes and the scholarship money, one of Moguls’ longstanding executive volunteers believes that’s only a small part of participant motivation.
“This competition isn’t about the money. Yes, the money is considerable and means a lot in the moment, but I try to get them to understand that it will only be a fraction of what they’ll earn in their careers,” explains Ally Senior Director of Supplier Development and Sustainability TJ Lewis. “Everyone who participates gains something invaluable beyond money, even those who don’t ‘win.’ They go through a unique collective experience that bonds them for life. This is their cohort, their business network, their support throughout their careers. And that will help them much more than the money.”
Both Brown and Lewis cite a number of Moguls alumni who have risen through the ranks at Ally. They also appreciate that a few Moguls interns from 2019 went on to develop a concept for a middle school financial education curriculum in Minecraft that, to date, has enjoyed more than four and a half million downloads. Success stories abound as virtually every alumnus goes on to successfully deploy the soft- and hard-skills developed in just one Shark-Tank-like weekend. But having just one weekend make such a crucial difference is exactly what’s supposed to happen.
“Access, exposure, and opportunity—that’s what provides them with career success,” adds Brown. “We really want to help students see a pathway for the future while building lifelong relationships along the way.”
