At the end of class on a Monday this fall, a group of high school students pulled their chairs into a circle. Students were working in teams to design and pitch apps that address real problems in communities they care about. Their work called for them to identify a community need, consider who would use their app, and decide which features would make it useful. Each project manager helped their team turn those ideas into a plan, divide responsibilities, and keep the work moving. And each one had to answer the same question: is your team green, yellow, or red?
Project managers whose teams were red went first. They named their challenge, and the other project managers worked out how to solve it. Their instructor, Ashley A. Bernard, supported the conversation.
That share circle is a small snapshot of something new at Launchpad. This fall, Launchpad 101 introduced its second pathway, Entrepreneurial Leadership (EL), alongside AI Software Development. EL teaches project management, entrepreneurial thinking, and leadership to Philadelphia high school students. Like their peers in AI Software Development, EL students finish the one-year program with two industry certifications (Certified Associate in Project Management and Generative AI Foundations), a completed paid internship, experience solving real problems for at least three employers, and in-demand project management and AI problem-solving skills, ready for their next postsecondary step.
Why a second pathway, and why entrepreneurial leadership
The team set criteria before weighing any field: student demand, employer demand, both college and non-college options after the program, a role AI is reshaping but won’t automate away, and strong partners already doing the work. Three finalists made the shortlist: community health worker, digital marketing, and business and project management. Project management offered a clear certification track and developed skills that transfer across career pathways and industries. It also gave the team something it wanted from the start: a pathway whose students could build alongside Launchpad’s software developers.
The team tested the options in focus groups with current students and alumni and in interviews with employers. Executive Director, Dannyelle Austin, opened conversations with the Project Management Institute (PMI), whose Educational Foundation has since become an anchor partner. But the student signal had been building for years. At school visits and info sessions, Program Director Nick Imparato regularly met students excited about code. He also kept hearing about interests that pointed in other directions.
Launchpad 101 was always designed to have more than one pathway. We piloted software development, and after three iterations, the team felt it had found a formula that worked. The turning point was Launchpad’s decision to center its programming on AI. Once AI was the focus, coding no longer had to be the only way in. Launchpad could teach students to use AI in other fields where it is changing the work just as fast.
The need in Philadelphia is real. Each year, roughly 8,000 students graduate from non-selective Philadelphia public and charter high schools without a realistic pathway to a middle-class career. Few get real exposure to work before they graduate: in a national survey, 79% of high school students wanted a work experience, but only 2% completed an internship. Meanwhile, AI is absorbing the routine entry-level tasks, like data entry, basic research, scheduling, and first drafts, that once introduced young people to professional work.
The skills that hold their value cut across industries. As of 2024, 51% of job postings requiring AI skills were outside IT and computer science, and the Project Management Institute projects that employers worldwide will need 25 million new project professionals by 2030. A student who can manage a project, lead a team, and use AI to deliver results has something to offer in almost any first job, whether that’s in healthcare, logistics, retail, construction, or technology.
”"Entrepreneurship and social media consistently came up over and over again. I felt like I was doing informal focus groups for three years, just talking to a bunch of high schoolers."
Nick ImparatoProgram Director
Those interests share a foundation: planning the work, leading people, and seeing a project through. EL builds that foundation for every student who wants skills that carry over to any field, wherever they land after high school.
Meet the Founding Instructor
”"If Launchpad had existed when I was their age, I would have done it."
Ashley Bernard
Ashley A. Bernard came to Launchpad as an entrepreneur and community strategist with ten years of experience running her own business. She taught Launchpad’s Foundations program this summer, a move she calls an unexpected career pivot, and stayed on to build EL from scratch. She also teaches Growth Development, Launchpad’s course on the durable skills every student needs.
She designed the curriculum the way Launchpad designs everything, starting from competencies. She defined what students need to be able to do, then worked backward to map each unit and lesson. She aligned the curriculum with CAPM competencies, including project planning, stakeholder communication, and managing work from start to finish, while integrating opportunities for students to use AI to solve real problems. She also drew on existing entrepreneurship curricula and her experience coaching adult entrepreneurs.
What she added is the part most curricula leave out: mindset. Many existing materials are practical and quantitative. Ashley layers in reflection, agency, and the judgment that comes from experience, and she is transparent with students about her own work. When the class covered personal branding, she told them about a new client call that had come from a LinkedIn relationship that same week.
”"You don't want life to just happen to you. You want to be an architect of your own life."
Ashley BernardFounding EL Instructor
Inside the Classroom
Ashley calls her room a sandbox: a place to practice so students can act with more confidence once they’re out in the world. A lot of that practice happens on paper. In an AI-focused program, she deliberately pulls students off screens for planning, reflection, and journaling, because writing by hand keeps them doing the thinking themselves.
Mapping time versus capacity. Ashley’s first Growth Development lesson of the year, adapted from a talk she had prepared for a summit of adult entrepreneurs, put students’ time on paper. With markers and a color-coded map, they laid out what their weeks actually look like. Two rules: sleep goes on the map first, and everyone has to find 30 minutes that belong only to them.
The results were concrete. One student realized he was waking up earlier than he needed to and gained 45 minutes to an hour of sleep a day. Another still uses the map he made in September to plan his meals each week.
Mapping time against real capacity is a core project management habit: take on only what you can deliver, and deliver it well. Most people used to learn that habit in their first entry-level job. As AI takes over more of that work, young people can’t count on that job to teach them, so Launchpad teaches time management from day one, and EL builds on it all year.
Building relationships with stakeholders. Much of a project manager’s job is communication: keeping a team aligned, updating a client, and earning the trust of people who don’t report to you. Stakeholder communication is one of the core CAPM competencies, and Ashley starts building it with how students connect with people. In a lesson on networking, she asked students how it feels when someone only talks to you because they want something. From there, the class reframed networking as relationship building, the same approach they will need with the employers who bring projects through CAPS. For students who find those conversations hard, she builds in a buddy system so every student has a way in.
Running projects like a real team. Students in EL serve as project managers for app teams. Every Monday they hold stand-ups with status updates, the way a tech company would. Each week they meet in a project manager share circle to work through challenges together while Ashley facilitates.
The goal is for students to leave with tools they can carry into any workplace, and to bring those structures with them where they don’t already exist.
Two Pathways, One Cohort
EL is not a separate program. It runs alongside AI Software Development, and the two pathways are designed to meet.
- Shared AI curriculum. Every 101 student takes the same AI course and works toward a Generative AI Foundations certification.
- Joint app projects. EL students manage teams building apps with software development students, a collaboration that culminates in February at Ignite, Launchpad 101’s pitch competition, where teams pitch the apps they’ve built.
- A shared book and project. In the second half of the AI course, students read Unmasking AI, and EL and software students will collaborate on a project tied to it.
- Clubs. Launchpad’s 3D design club gives students from both pathways a place to build together outside program hours.
Part of a National Movement
EL launched with a national partner. Launchpad is now an affiliate of the CAPS Network, a community of schools and programs across the country practicing Profession-Based Learning, where students solve real problems alongside industry and community partners. Many CAPS programs share Launchpad’s model: students attend school in the morning and spend afternoons in a professional learning setting.
Through CAPS, employers will bring real business challenges into the EL classroom, giving students repeated chances to apply project management and leadership to them.
Because EL centers durable, transferable skills, the pathway can take on employer partners and problems from many sectors. Students apply the same skills in different settings and find out which kinds of work fit them. Ashley and Nick have already joined the network’s monthly leadership calls with programs from across the country.
What Success Looks Like
This is EL’s first year, and the team is clear about what it hopes to see from its first graduates.
A next step that fits. Every graduate should leave with a postsecondary plan aligned with their goals. Launchpad is building routes with partners including We Love Philly, whose digital marketing pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship suit students who aren’t headed to college; College Together, which offers digital business associate’s and bachelor’s degrees through Southern New Hampshire University’s in-person Philadelphia campus; and Community College of Philadelphia, where some EL students are already enrolled.
For students like Tyrone Gooding, EL is a place to build real work experience and the relationships that lead to what’s next.
”“You have deadlines and real stakes, so you understand what it’s truly like to work as a project manager. The connections at Launchpad open doors to whatever you want to do next: go to school, get a good job, or start a business. You can use this program to literally do anything.”
Tyrone GoodingEL Student
A certification that travels. This is Launchpad’s first year preparing students for the CAPM exam. For Ashley, the value goes beyond the certificate.
”"Project management is inherent in every role that they will have, both personally and professionally, in their lives."
Ashley BernardFounding EL Instructor
Internships that last. Many of Launchpad’s internships are project-based, and a student with project management training can come in and execute with minimal oversight. Nick’s favorite outcome is when an internship host wants to keep working with a student through the school year.
Ashley’s measure of success is simpler. She wants every student to leave knowing their lives will be shaped by the choices they make, and that those choices are theirs.
Have a problem our students can take on? Through the CAPS Network, Launchpad invites employers to bring a real business challenge into the EL classroom. Student teams spend three to four weeks scoping the work, managing timelines, communicating with your team, and using AI tools to build a solution, then present it to you for feedback. Challenges can come from any sector, from healthcare and nonprofits to small business and technology, and partners get an early look at emerging talent for internships. To bring a project to EL, contact Ashley A. Bernard at ashley@launchpadphilly.org.
Authors
Ashley Bernard is the Founding Instructor of Entrepreneurial Leadership at Launchpad. As an entrepreneur herself, Ashley is dedicated to guiding young Philadelphians to become architects of their own lives, drawing on ten years of running her community strategy consultancy, inter alia creative co., and her own path as a proud graduate of Philadelphia public schools.
Iman Sayeed is the Development Manager at Launchpad. After serving as an elementary education teacher for KIPP Academy Boston, Iman came to Launchpad, eager to raise engagement and investment in our organization.
Nick Imparato is the High School Program Director for Launchpad and has been with Building 21 since 2022. He was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, and a proud alumnus of the Baltimore City Public Schools system. Since earning his BA from Pomona College, Nick has dedicated his career to working with young people as a technology instructor and algebra tutor. He is moved by the mission of workforce development and eager to equip the young people of Philadelphia with resources, job experience, and a creative outlet. As the High School Program Director, Nick is responsible for recruitment, student communication and support, relationship building with partner schools, curriculum development and delivery for Foundations and 101 programming. In his capacity as Python instructor, Nick has been recognized for his teaching skills by CS4PHILLY with the CS Teacher Award for Early-Career Achievement.
