In early March, students Isaac Rothschild and Nikhil Dilip, both grade 11, attended the Enterprise Leadership Conference in Asilomar, where they learned about the ins and outs of business by developing product ideas with other students at the conference and coming up with plans to market them. Harker was invited to the conference by the San Jose Rotary Club, and the students were nominated by the faculty to attend.

“In addition, prominent businessmen with experience in the entrepreneurship, management, finance, marketing sectors spoke to us about their careers and provided us with advice for our own projects,” Dilip said. “The majority of the time was spent fleshing out the details of our product, detailing the finances, and devising a way to market it to our consumers.”

In addition to providing valuable lessons about how to conduct business ventures, the conference also gave the students the chance to meet and exchange ideas with students from other high schools. “In just three days, we worked with seven people whom we had never met before to create a plan for developing, financing and marketing a product we made ourselves,” said Dilip. “I found that the ability of each team to develop a unique product in such a short amount of time was remarkable.”