YESG Staff
Michael Caslin is Executive Vice President of Public Policy for the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). Under Mike's leadership, NFTE has "gone to scale" from 2 teachers at start-up sites in the South Bronx and Newark and a budget of $190,000 to having 4,500 NFTE-trained teachers in 31 states and in 13 countries throughout the world and an organizational budget of $15 million. As a national spokesperson for NFTE, he has been featured by The Boston Globe, Chronicle of Philanthropy, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, ABC Evening News, CNN with Lou Dobbs, National Public Radio, DPTV-Dalian (China), MBC-Seoul (South Korea) among a great number of other media outlets. Caslin himself is an entrepreneur , and had established ventures in the aquafarm, video production, crisis and corporate turnaround management services, and real estate sectors, before taking a leave of absence to help NFTE.
Caslin has made more than 50 presentations at major forums in both the United States and abroad, in such venues as the Price Babson International Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators; Brandeis University, Harvard University, the Inc. 500 Annual Conference; W.K. Kellogg Foundation's National African American Male Collaboration; White House Conference on Small Business; Stanford University; and the 12th Annual Windsor Meeting, Blairquhan Castle, Ayreshire, Scotland. Fellowships and Prizes: 1999 Norfolk Trust World Fellowship, 1998 Price-Babson College Fellows, 1997 University of Arizona Economics Science Laboratory Fellowship, 1994 Price-Babson College Fellowship, and the 1978 The Fund for American Studies at Georgetown University. It is his passionate conviction that every child born into poverty should be given the opportunity to transcend it and that the best chance for achieving this will come through entrepreneurship learning experiences and individual effort.
Gloria Sandiford is currently the Program Manager for NFTE’s Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group. In 2005 she became a NFTE Certified Entrepreneurship Teacher (CET), and has successfully taught the NFTE curriculum to middle and high school students for such organizations as GlassRoots, Inc., The Boys Club of Newark, and The Greater Newark Academy. In 2006, she received the NFTE Apprentice-CET of the Year Award. Additionally, she has taught the NFTE BizCamp program to Prep for Prep students at the Institute for Entrepreneurship (IFE), in Jersey City — a program funded by The Goldman Sachs Foundation.
Before joining NFTE, Gloria worked for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (NJSO), as Education and Community Programs Coordinator, organizing seasonal concerts for the Greater Newark Youth Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra, and the NJSO Community Chorus. From 2001-2004 she was President and CEO of her own company, Queen Entertainment. Representing performing artists, she procured performance/entertainment contract opportunities with organizations such as Southern Company, The Kennedy Center, and the Newark Public Schools.
Prior to her non-profits work, Gloria enjoyed a career in the for-profit sector for twelve-years with Federated Department Stores, which culminated in executive positions of Direct Mail Marketing Administrator and later Associate Buyer of Cosmetics, where she was responsible for more than ten well-known cosmetic lines in 17 stores throughout the Northeast, with sales in excess of $30 million. Gloria holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Marketing from Long Island University and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Rutgers University. She is actively involved in her community mentoring to young people and assisting new entrepreneurs in the creation of business plans, location selection, real estate and marketing.
Sunny Sumter is a consultant with non-profits and for-profits institutions with an expertise in program management, strategic planning, and directing community engagement initiatives. She brings over 10 years of progressive responsibilities within reputable non-profit institutions including the Aspen Institute, from 1998-2004, where she managed three public policy projects and also served as special projects director for the Alma & Joseph Gildenhorn Book Series. As program manager, her focus was on areas of information technology, diversity and the media, and telecommunications policy.
Prior to serving as consultant with the Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group, Sumter was head buyer for her family business, Karibu Books—the largest African American bookstore company in the country. She was a member of the executive and strategic team and directed key outreach initiatives. Sumter also served as manager of Trellis Fund, a granting organization dedicated to responding to the needs of the most disadvantaged and underprivileged residents of the Washington DC community.
Sumter earned her B.A. from Howard University where she studied arts business management with a focus on finance and marketing; and, notably, jazz music. She was a professional jazz artist for over 15 years touring the U.S. and abroad and was a host of Jazz Central, on the BET network. A passionate supporter of jazz education, Sumter is a member of DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative and the International Association for Jazz Education.
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