Alabama students pitch business ideas to Condoleezza Rice at Regions Bank

Imagine being a student in the seventh or eighth grade with an idea for a business you would like others to invest in. Now imagine you’re making your pitch to a room full of business and community leaders that includes former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the CEO of Regions Bank.

That was what six teams of students faced Monday as part of the Birmingham Education Foundation’s “Gear Up” program that works with promising students through a variety of programs and events from seventh grade through their first year of college.

Condoleezza Rice hears business pitches from Birmingham students from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

The teams had gone through a series of competitions and mentorships with entrepreneurs and business leaders before earning the chance to make their final pitches at Regions’ corporate headquarters in downtown Birmingham.

The ideas were:

• “All-Star Barbers” from an eighth-grade team at John Herbert Phillips Academy who wanted to open barber shops with game rooms.

• “Water Tech” from an eighth-grade team at Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School who wanted to convert water into electricity.

• “Motion Sensors” from a seventh-grade team at W.J. Christian to make it easier to take selfies or video for times when you don’t have anyone to hold your phone.

• “Teen Inc.” from an eighth-grade team at Wylam K-8 School who envisioned a safe place for teenagers to hang out with food, skating, movies, games and sports venues.

• “D2” from a seventh-grade team at Bertram A. Hudson K-8 School who wanted to offer customizable sports helmets to guard against concussions.

• “Ospedale di Famiglia” from a seventh-grade team at Huffman Middle School who wanted to combine a hospital with a hotel and resort to allow families of the terminally ill to spend quality time with patients.

The winning proposal was Ospedale di Famiglia, which earned the team a trophy and the school a check for $1,000.

“I feel really inspired by how my idea got picked because there were so many great ideas out there that were pitched. It was an honor to be picked to win this competition,” said Katherine Anderson, a member of the winning team.

She said the experience has been educational.

“It helps us with public speaking,” she said. “It helps us to know as young as we are, we can make a difference in the world.”

The team was also happy that Huffman Middle School is getting the $1,000.

“Every school, of course, needs a little help,” Anderson said. “Helping them in this way can really make a big improvement in our school.”

Rice spoke on “Persuasive Speaking: Selling Your Ideas on Any Stage” after the students made their pitches. She noted how impressive the ideas were and how well the teens delivered their “Shark Tank”-style presentations.

Rice said what she liked most was how the students were identifying problems that were important to them and creating solutions.

Business, education and other institutions collaborating together are what makes communities strong, she said. For individuals, education is key to the equation.

“Without a high-quality education, you are a victim of your circumstances,” Rice said. “With a high-quality education, you may not be able to control your circumstance, but you can control your response to your circumstances.”

Rice recounted how her grandfather sold enough cotton to go to Stillman College. At the end of the first year, he was told he could not continue unless he had money to pay for another year. He learned many of the other students were attending with scholarships because they had committed to become Presbyterian ministers upon graduation.

“If you want to be a Presbyterian minister, then you can have a scholarship too,” Rice said the school told her grandfather.

“That’s exactly what I had in mind,” Rice said the son of a sharecropper replied.

“My family has been college-educated and Presbyterian ever since,” Rice said.

Leroy Abrahams, Regions Bank’s north central Alabama president, said Rice’s words resonated not only with the students, but with everyone in the room.

“The point that I walk away with is when you think about what America is and what we have been as a country for so long, we are this conglomeration of so many different cultures, of so many different ideas and ways of looking at life,” he said. “That is, in fact, one of our greatest strengths. It may be difficult for others to understand that, but if you live here and you appreciate that, you realize that the strength in diversity is one of the things we should be very proud of.”

Like Rice, Abrahams said he was impressed by the pitches from the teams.

“It’s very encouraging, it’s very motivating to see the fruition of all of the hard work the students put in,” he said. “I think the art of public speaking will always be an important part of how we communicate and how ideas get communicated in our country and in the world. I think it only dies out … if we decide we’re not going to invest in those skills with our children, with our students.”