Anderson High School Junior, Maryam Zoweil’s, star is shining bright! We at JA and EY are so proud of your grit and determination to reach your full potential!
Maryam has taken all of the JA lessons she learned from her mentors, Greg Quarles and Destin Bell to not only propel her own entrepreneurial endeavors but to inspire other Anderson students. She is a leader amongst her peers and is a great role model for young people - when you lean in and say yes to learning new things, you will be closer to the future you envision.
From Maryam-
“My primary company is Teengage, a career exploration application that provides students from 14-18 years of age to discover local opportunities in their area of interest and connect to local volunteer organizations. This application promotes youth engagement in their communities and ensures a steady labor force of talented and skilled teenagers looking to develop professionalism and gain first-hand experience. Through Teenage, businesses and programs are able to advertise their open positions/opportunities to their target audience on a user-friendly, customized, and clutter-free platform. So far, I have developed a fully functional prototype for this app using the development tool Figma and pitched the concept at the Junior Achievement of Central Texas Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Summit at the Capital Factory, winning first place overall. Through the next year, I hope to continue working on developing this app, surveying the target audience, and making it available to high school students in Austin and (eventually) beyond. I have further translated the skills I have developed through creating a start-up concept (Teengage) into creating a coffee shop business at my school.
Founder of the Junior Achievement Company Program Club at Anderson High School, I have led our 14-member club in establishing a coffee shop that sells drinks to students in the morning. In just four weeks, our profitable business has made over 80 sales and provided students at Anderson High School with the opportunity to learn invaluable skills in marketing and finance that we would not have been able to learn in the classroom. I believe that my experience in these two companies encapsulates what it means to be a young entrepreneur and my passion for making a positive change in my community through entrepreneurship.
My primary goal after high school is to use my experiences in data analytics, equity-centered design, and business to pursue a major in business and a minor in Computer Science at a top 20 business school. I am passionate about pursuing education in these two fields because of my dedication to finding innovative ways to solve common problems. I am confident that a future in the fields of tech and business will help me achieve my all-time goal of building and managing an innovation that helps improve the standard of living for underprivileged communities around the world.
I’ve taken several business-focused classes during my time in high school but one quote that stood out to me most and convinced me that this is the field for me was “If you can sell, you can do anything.” I believe this quote encapsulates the entrepreneurial spirit of hard work and ambition that I highly value. Pursuing a career within the intersection of business and tech will not only support me in channeling my creativity but will also allow me to take advantage of the ever-growing field of technology in order to discover even more innovative solutions for our world’s most pressing problems.
After college, I hope to strengthen my experience with business by working in a corporate setting for a few years and then using the skills I develop to start a social enterprise. My ultimate goal is to become a successful entrepreneur. Becoming an entrepreneur would not only satisfy my driven and creative character but also my ultimate motivation to create something bigger than myself through social entrepreneurship.”
