Welcome to My Blog… About…

 

Julie Silard Kantor
Executive Director, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE DC Region)

Julie Silard Kantor is a proven and dynamic leader in the field of entrepreneurship education and has led the organization with demonstrated growth to serve over 24,000 local youth.  After a brief tenure at Inc. Magazine, Julie launched NFTE-New England in 1992, serving the most economically challenged neighborhoods of Massachusetts. She established and personally taught NFTE classes at numerous public schools and youth programs. In 1995, she moved back to Washington, DC and took over operations of the Greater Washington, DC Division where she serves as Executive Director, responsible for enhancing and expanding NFTE programs throughout the region and building ‘best practice’ templates for the organization both locally nationally and internationally.

 

In 2008 Kantor served as the Policy Director for the Aspen Institute’s Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group to look at scalability of the youth entrepreneurship movement nationally. Kantor has raised over $20 million for youth entrepreneurship education and helped drive NFTE’s replication in several US cities and India.

Kantor was featured as Top 100 Leaders to Watch Under 40 in Washingtonian Magazine’s Millenium Issue, Top 20 Leaders Who We Most Admire in SmartCEO magazine, Brava Women’s Leadership Award & Hall of Fame Award, and NFTE Executive of the year in 2005 & 2007. She is often referred to as NFTE’s Chief Catalyst.

Kantor is a national spokesperson on youth entrepreneurship education and social entrepreneurship and her speaking engagements include the National Urban League, Women’s Business Network International Conference, the National Black MBA Conference, Diversity Best Practice, European Union/ US Roundtable on Youth Employment in Brussels 2008, Entrepreneurship Week in New Orleans. Mid-Atlantic Venture Association (MAVA), Tavis Smiley’s SuccessSoul Conference , the George Washington University Hoffman Lecture Series, Keynote Presentation for GWU Women’s Leadership Conference, PBS, CNN and more.

Ms. Kantor has recruited and built a high performing, results- oriented Board of Advisors with 23 members that has been recognized with SmartCEO’s Spirited  Service Award.  She also currently serves on several boards including the Prince George’s Chamber of Commerce and Leadership Greater Washington.
In her book, I SAID YES: Real Life Stories of Students, Teachers and Leaders Saying YES! To Youth Entrepreneurship in America’s Schools (Gazelles, Inc. Publishing- available on amazon.com) , Ms. Kantor gives her first-person account as a social entrepreneur, taking the reader inside the real-life stories of inner-city youth and others whose lives have been influenced, inspired and forever changed by their interest in becoming  entrepreneurs.

Born and raised in Washington, DC, Ms. Kantor started working in small business at the age of eleven. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications and English from Simmons College in Boston. Ms. Kantor lives in Washington, DC with her husband, daughter and dog.

 

She can be reached at juliek@nfte.com Twitter- @NFTEJuliek