Aurora students compete in GI Builders Challenge

Brain-storming ideas for starting a new business was the name of the game last week in the first-ever Grand Island Area Economic Development Corporation’s Future Builders Challenge, which included several students from Aurora.
Forty-five students from seven area schools were selected for the competition using the Gallup Builder Profile 10, a research-based assessment used to identify a person’s dominant builder talents. The end result featured Shark Tank type presentations on business ideas which coordinators and judges agreed were top notch.
Students participating from Aurora included Mackenzie Kluck, Cara Thomas, Owen Lubbe, Kaden Johnson, Lucas Talkington and Israel Dominguez. Dominguez’ team place second overall, and Lubbe’s team placed third.
Among the event’s sponsors was the Aurora Development Corporation, which pledged a donation back in 2019. The first Future Builders Challenge was scheduled for March 2020, but was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic.
“I was amazed at what students came up with,” said Tara Nettifee, the event coordinator and former GI Development Corporation employee. “They are not restricted like adults are a lot of times, thinking ‘Oh, we shouldn’t do this or whatever.’ They think really big picture, without limits, and that’s what we wanted them to do, without thinking of the dollar signs or the hurdles that we as adults already know might be in the way. They put these big ideas out there and it’s always super impressive to see.”
Ryan Wineteer, a former teacher who now serves as business development manager with Hamilton Telecommunications in Aurora, served as a mentor for the two-day competition, saying he was impressed with the ideas students developed and pitched.
“I thought it was great that they got to see what entrepreneurism really looks like,” he said. “It was good to see them get away from the classroom type environment and truly brainstorm how the business model is going to fit, how they’re going to produce and market their idea, how they are going to pitch it and potential investors or community involvement. It was just a different model than I think most kids probably see in your average business class.”
The concepts presented were vastly different, with the winning idea pitching a downtown festival in Grand Island which would benefit a nonprofit organization every year. The project was called the “Grand Island Future Business Fund.”
“The ideas were all over the board,” Wineteer recalled. “The ideas ranged from wanting to start a business and how the business will impact the community, if it was a nonprofit versus truly a business, how it’s going to make money, and then what the impact is going to be to the community. I saw a couple that were incredibly well done in terms of the pitch on ‘Shark Tank,’ where they had their full pitch memorized and then they would hand off to the next person to kind of take the next point. They were just really, really well done.”
Nettifee expanded on the program’s goal, which was to allow high school students to explore their builder talents, what she described as an innate ability to create, sustain or develop a business.
“They are very much an entrepreneur-type mindset kind of people and a lot of times they don’t know that they have that mind-set,” she said. “The Future Builders Challenge helps explore that and helps them look at themselves, then work as a team to come up with a business idea that would help the community.
“I feel like the program went really well,” she continued. “We really couldn’t have done it without the support of the schools and our community sponsors, helping support our young people as they’re figuring out who they are and what they want to do. That’s super important, so I’m really excited and hope they continue to stay involved next year as well.”