We have just received good news from the IRS. As of October 27th, 2011, Talk About Your Future, Inc. has been approved as a 501(3)(c) charitable organization with tax exempt status. Thank you for the hard work of our board member, John Williamson of Morris, Manning & Martin LLP who put together the submission.
Please donate & deduct! Also, if you know of any small family foundations, we’d love to be able to connect with them!
Prommis Solutions Senior Vice President, Ed Hill talked with Grady High School students about the lessons he learned, the mistakes he had made, and about finding a path towards success.
Ed tells the story of the consequences he endured from making bad choices early in his adult life. He now feels like he has been blessed as a result of making better choices and tell the students how working on their attitude and work ethic will inevitably lead them to a happy life.
He discusses the trap of “Employee Entitlement” and tells how he often sees young people who believe that they are owed something. He says that it’s not where you start that’s important, it really about where you finish that counts.
Ed Hill: Ways to Be a Valuable Employee
By Ben Gross
That changed, however, when Hill reconnected with a distantcousin, who taught him about the value of taking responsibility for one’sactions and thereby regaining control over one’s life. His cousin helped him learn to face upto his struggles and take ownership of them. It’s never too late, Hill learned, to change for the betterand to break away from a negative cycle. Hill urged the students not to blame the world for any problems theymight encounter as they grow older; instead, he urged them to spend theirenergy making positive choices and looking for practical solutions. “Take the word entitlement out of yourvocabulary…No matter where we start, it’s where we finish that matters. We may have been dealt a bad hand, butwe have to own it and embrace it…Attitude and work ethic determine success,”Hill told the class. Hillcontinued, “You are the sum total of all of the decisions you have made.” Hill ended with a few simple words ofadvice. He told the students to avoidcomplainers, keep a good attitude, and work hard – all while always rememberingthe importance of every decision they make.
Suneel Mandava, Managing Director at William Blair and Company, tells the story of how his father’s choices made all the difference in his life, and the lives of his children. When you are in high school, it’s hard to imagine how your choices will have an impact on future generations, but that’s exactly what happened in India many years ago when his father was growing up. He tells how “working the fields” was his family’s destiny for thousands of years. That all changed when his dad got the chance to go to school and chose to work hard.
Suneel’s story gives hope and inspiration for each of us to change the future in a positive way. He shares the three daily tips he uses to keep his own kids on track. He says “believe in yourself”, “do your best and accept the results”, and “have compassion for others.”
Suneel is good friends with our chairman, Denis Brosnan who asked him to speak to the students at Grady High school, as part of the Grady Talks program. He explains that when he was younger, he volunteered with the Upward Bound, program that gives high school students exposure to business professionals.
Atlanta Personality, Jeff Johnson, talks about the characters in his life and how they play a role in shaping his life. As an entertainer, Jeff uses his talents to motivate high school students to take the first step towards building their future. He asks, “How are you going to go out today and start that process of making this world a better place to be?” He tell of a concept he uses as a way of looking at life. He calls his metaphor, “Splashing Through the Puddles of Life” and describes how he uses it to deal with the unknown. Enjoy Jeff’s entertaining stream-of-consciousness and see if he motivates you to “go for it!”
More about Jeff Johnson
Jeff’s Blog, Splashing Through the Puddles of Life
Jeff Johnson: Asking Adults for Career Help
By Ben Gross
Atlanta Business Attorney, Dave Walker, a member of the Grady Talks/Talk About Your Future team, instructs the Grady High class on the nature of relationships. He provides a great way to look at your daily interactions with others. He says you need to build up characters in your life that give you positive energy. You can avoid negative energy and stay out of trouble, by minimizing time with people who bring you down and letting the people around you know what your story is.
If you build up a cast of characters in your life while you are still in high school, you will have an easier time of it later on. Build relationships with the adults you meet while you are young. Give them positive energy and they will care about you and help you when you need them.
Suneel Mandava: Three Mantras for Daily Life
By Ben Gross
Suneel Mandava, Managing Director at prestigious Chicago investment bank William Blair and Company, flew down to Atlanta from the Windy City to address a group of Grady High students. Mandava, who came to the United States from India when he was 3 years old, told the story of his father, a man who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to change his destiny.
Mandava told the students that in a culture where conformity is expected (India has a 4,000 year old Caste system, which dictates that the children of every new generation should perform the same exact social function as their parents) his father dared to be different and write his own story. Education, Mandava said, was the turning point for his father. Living with his parents and 7 siblings in a two-room shack, Mandava’s father worked hard every day to be the top student in his high school class, to win a scholarship to medical school, and to finally bring his family to the United States. Mandava’s father did not have many opportunities as a child, but what few he did – notably access to education – he took full advantage of. And, he always asked his teachers and principles for help and guidance, which they readily gave him when they saw his determination to succeed. Thus, by believing in himself, working hard, and never hesitating to ask for help, Mandava’s father changed not only his own destiny, but that of his son, his son’s children, their children, and so on. “When you change the course of your life,” Mandava said, “you change it for every following generation, too.”
After telling the story of his father, Mandava shared what he called “his three simple mantras” with the class. He told them:
1) Believe in Yourself – if you don’t believe in yourself and your abilities, who will?
2) Do your Best and Accept the Results – you can’t always be better than everyone else, but you can always do your personal best, and when you do so you should always be proud.
3) Have Compassion for Others – often the most successful people are not the smartest or the most talented, they are the ones who can show others that they care.
And, he reminded them, when you succeed, you improve not only your life, but the lives of following generations, too…and in these days of global warming, economic recession, energy shortages and other such issues threatening to pose serious problems in the future, following generations could certainly use some good news!
Grady Talks is a project that is owned by a new start up non-profit organization called, “Talk About Your Future, Inc.”. Last week, we put out a press release announcing our new website, gradytalks.org. Wow, what a response! We got picked up by media organizations across the country. If you do a Google search on “Talk About Your Future, Inc.” you will see our results.
We’ve also filed for official 501c3 status with the government. If we receive the designation, you will be allowed to make a tax-deductible donation to our organization. Here is how we described Talk About Your Future, Inc. in the filing:
TAYF is a Georgia non-profit corporation in good standing, which has been and will beoperated exclusively for charitable purposes, particularly educational purposes and combatingjuvenile delinquency. TAYF provides mentoring and career counseling to urban high schoolstudents, with an emphasis upon at-risk populations. TAYF’s two principal initiatives are: (1)a series of motivational talks given by business, civic and political leaders, as well as celebritiesand athletes, and (2) career coaching in small group sessions and workshops. Today, TAYFoperates a pilot program at Grady High School, an urban high school in the City of Atlantapublic school system. TAYF is presently funded by donations of board members and individualdonors. TAYF is seeking an exemption under Section 501(c)(3) to facilitate the solicitationof charitable gifts, which would allow TAYF to expand its operations to other City of Atlantapublic schools. For more information about TAYF, see http://gradytalks.org.
TAYF aims to give Hope, Guidance, Inspiration, Motivation, Direction and Connectionsto high school students and show them the possibility of moving forward in directions they neverdreamed possible. Far too many students are not sufficiently engaged enough in school to stayafter the legal drop-out age of sixteen. Many young students have had no meaningful or positiveexposure to the world they are about to enter and as a result do not see their own possibilities.Our program aims to open up that broader world to them, and help them make decisions andchoices now that will set them on a path to fuller and more productive lives in the future.
TAYF began as small volunteer effort by a parent to provide free career coaching to highschool students, and has evolved into a weekly speaker series featuring an impressive list ofcorporate leaders, celebrities and professional athletes. The consistent message from the speakersis: “Find something that you love to do and are good at, and make that your future.”
Thespeaker series kicked off in September 2010 with basketball superstar, Chris Webber, talkingto a packed auditorium of 300 Grady High School freshmen about achieving their dreams.Public Broadcasting Atlanta’s recording of Chris’s talk is available HERE.
Other speakers includerepresentatives from a wide variety of prominent companies, organizations and institutions suchas The Home Depot, WSB-TV, Chick-fil-A, Turner Studios, Georgia Tech and the CDC, as wellas leading law firms and other professionals.
ATLANTA, Sept. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Talk About Your Future, an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization focused on helping at-risk students at Atlanta‘surban high schools to graduate and move on to productive careers and happy, healthy lives, has launched a new website for Grady Talks, its volunteer initiative focused on connecting business professionals with urban high school students through a series of lectures and discussions.GradyTalks.org, which features streaming video of lectures from the 2011-2012 school year, includes video footage of previous assemblies andevents, as well as an updated calendar of events for the 2011 – 2012 school year.
Grady Talks seeks to introduce at-risk urban high school students to a variety of local businesspeople from various professions, in a non-threatening small group setting. Topics vary from person to person, but all lectures focus on the importance of staying in school and graduating, while also encouraging students to find their passions, follow their dreams, and define their own successes. “We are so proud of the new face of our organization,” said Liz Lieberman, founder of Grady Talks. “Through our new website, students will be able to not only learn more about the Grady Talks program, but will be able to easily view upcoming lectures and events and provide feedback.”
About Grady Talks Grady Talks is a volunteer effort that endeavors to link urban public high school students with business professionals, in order to ignite the passion needed to develop a healthy life. This includes providing opportunities for these students to succeed through connections with business professionals, creating a plan to help students define success while encouraging them to follow their dreams and passions. The goal of Grady Talks is to provide every student in urban Atlanta Schools the chance to engage professionals in any business field and hear important stories of lessons learned by the great minds in the business world. For more information visit www.gradytalks.org
Press Contact:
Jeri Yoshida
Strategic Vantage Marketing & Public Relations
310 396 8813
JeriYoshida@StrategicVantage.com
SOURCE Talk About Your Future, Inc.
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