Ashley Sease Selected As "Young Entrepreneur of the Year"

By: Norma Brown, Business Teacher

YEScarolina, a local organization whose mission is to train teachers to teach entrepreneurship has just announced that, Ashley Sease who attends Dutch Fork High School, has been selected a winner in the annual “YEScarolina Young Entrepreneurs of the Year” competition. 

YEScarolina is the program partner for the national organization, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), in South Carolina.  “Nothing is more rewarding than empowering young people with the belief that they can make a difference in their lives,” comments Jimmy Bailey, CEO/Founder of YEScarolina.  “The remarkable results prove that NFTE’s unique entrepreneurial curriculum works and provides a structure for channeling creativity into profits.”  From 2003 to 2010, YEScarolina had trained 525 teachers to become NFTE certified and these teachers in turn have touched thousands of young South Carolinians with this wonderful and innovative entrepreneurship curriculum.

Ashley Sease will be attending the YEScarolina Annual Gala and Youth Entrepreneurship Celebration in Charleston, South Carolina on October 21 and 22, 2010.  She will showcase her business plan and product, if applicable, at the Gala being held at Memminger Auditorium on Thursday evening.  She will attend classes at the College of Charleston on Friday morning, with a college entrepreneurial student mentor.  At noon on Friday Ashley will attend an awards luncheon where she will receive her $250.00 award money. Ashley is a senior at Dutch Fork High School and is the project manager for DECA an association of Marketing students and her advisor is Norma Brown 

Ashley’s business she will showcase is a fashion line, self-titled, Ashley Lauren.  Which according to The Spirit of Outreach “has a certain ring of celebrity to it.”  Her vision is a group of girlfriends, different sizes, come to her store and be able to shop together and have fun again.  Sease wants women to love their bodies no matter what size.