Meet Ascendance | Social Enterprise

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ascendance and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ascendance, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
It all started in 2015 when our four founders, Mathura, Harsha, Sanadt, and Heerraa, came together to form Ascendance. Since our formation in 2015, Ascendance has impacted 55,000 students in 26 countries through various conferences, outreach programs, teenage entrepreneur challenges, and online platforms.

What started as an after-school project to engage our peers, Ascendance’s mission is to empower at-risk students, from middle school to university, to achieve holistic success (happiness, education, career, health) and become active contributors to their communities. A social enterprise that is run by students from the ages of 10 to 26 years old, Ascendance tailors our programs to provide the awareness, guidance, mentorship, and resources for students to become aware of their interests, develop their skills, gain real-world experience, and start developing their own careers while they are in high school or university.

Over the years, our work has been recognized by the Diana Foundation (UK) where we were awarded The Diana Award (2019) for young changemakers in appreciation for their humanitarian work.

Our flagship program, “Teenage Entrepreneur Challenge” (a 6-month program that develops budding high school entrepreneurs from the ground up to launch their own ventures) is set to run for its third consecutive year, with high schools from Philadelphia, Indonesia, and Malaysia participating in the program. Our newest initiative, the “ImpactPreneurship Incubator, aims to nurture undergraduate entrepreneurs from universities around the world to form their own UN SDG-focused ventures with guidance from industry experts over a 30-week period.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
One the things we are most proud of is our “Teenage Entrepreneur Challenge”, which in 2023 had successfully incubated 40 running student-led ventures from the ground up across the program’s 6-month period. Each team comprised 5 high schoolers, either from Malaysia or Indonesia, and was paired with mentors who were undergraduates from universities from across the US (Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Georgia Tech, University of California, Berkeley). A truly cross-continental and collaborative program, “The Teenage Entrepreneur Challenge” also had participating mentors from Rwanda, Japan, and Switzerland. By the end of the 6-months, on top of mastering basic entrepreneurial and financial literacy skills, the participating high schoolers had a 76% increase in academic engagement and performance. Since these students had no business experience, they were able to learn about business operations, marketing and sales, accounting and customer relations, resulting in an 86% increase in financial literacy. Many of the teams were even interested in continuing their ventures post-program. There’s nothing that makes us more proud than seeing our participants empowered to lead and make a change in their lives and the communities around them.

Having such remarkable program outcomes wasn’t something that was a year in the making. In reality, we’d say it was a culmination of the work we’ve put into Ascendance over the past 9 years!

In fact, in the early days, it took a lot of convincing to get our programs on the ground and running at schools (even if they were for free!) It was practically unheard of that a bunch of teenagers were going to conduct a program for other teenagers. How could a 16 year old be old enough to run a company, let alone guide other teens? Well, thankfully, three kind educators took a chance and gave us a start by running our workshops and programs for their students. In little over a year, we had improved the schools’ student engagement rates, many students improving in their academics or even going on to represent their school in the arts or at sports tournaments. Starting with little over 40 students, word-of-mouth of our program’s credibility and results spread and by mid-2017, we had reached out to over 500 students. The rest is history.

In the years that followed, Ascendance received the opportunity to further expand our impact by conducting our programs with our national education department, the Malaysian Ministry of Education. Today, we have expanded our network to comprise over 900 schools in over 26 countries, with programs and workshops featuring guest speakers from Ivy League Universities and Fortune 500 Companies. Our methodologies of youth engagement and empowerment have been published in research papers, presented at TEDx Talks and international conferences, featured in mainstream newspapers and national television, and are discussed in roundtable sessions with policymakers. Thanks to the support of hundreds of educators, parents, and countless sponsors, Ascendance is able to grow to the scale we have today.

One of the things that we have learned along the way is that our potential is truly unlimited, that young people have the capacity and ability to change the world when we work together. As an organization run by students, oftentimes people don’t realize that our operations team comprise 12 year olds and 16 year olds, our photographers and videographers are 15 and 18 years old, that our reports and data team comprise of 13-year-olds while our social media team has 11-year-olds and 19-year-old content creators. From organizing national conferences, to hosting international programs – there is so much Ascendance has been able to accomplish thanks to the power of the young and the support from other generations.

But being young people, we also make many mistakes because oftentimes, it is our first time executing something new. We’d have countless out-of-focus photographs, typos and spelling mistakes in slides and reports, wrong shipment dates for our program parcels, missing equipment, wrong program tages – the list is endless! Yet, even though making mistakes is scary and uncomfortable, it’s the reason behind Ascendance’s learning process and growth. It is thanks to our mentors and the many kind-hearted adults around us who give us room to make mistakes and uncover the solutions which enables us to be resilient in the face of adversities.

There are so many exciting things that we have in the pipelines which we can’t wait to share with you about! One such program is our “Ascendance Founders Series” Masterclass workshops. To kick this program off, our youngest co-founder, Harsha, will be launching her series of workshops titled “Achieving Academic Excellence & Finding Your Ambition”. Being someone who didn’t know what her definitive passion would be, Harsha started exploring and building her skills at the age of 11. Having since created her own reality and dream career, this masterclass workshops aim to help fellow introverts and shy youngsters navigate through school and find their spark in life. Sharing her real-life experiences, triumphs and failures, Harsha’s interactive masterclass acts as a launchpad for youngsters to start shaping their goals and careers. To be a part of Harsha’s workshops, visit https://bit.ly/HarshaWorkshop for more information.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Of course, we’d highlight one of our amazing sponsors, Avery Dennison, who has an office just by Atlanta! We are honored and thrilled to be able to work with such a visionary and caring corporation that sees the importance of building the young and dedicates its efforts to working side-by-side with us!

When we’re not going for meetings around the city, an ideal day will start with grabbing a fulfilling breakfast at “Breakfast at Barney’s”, spending the afternoon in the beautiful Georgia Aquarium, and ending the day with catching a performance at the Sandy Springs Performing Center.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The first people we have to thank are our parents who have been encouraging and supporting us, the four founders of Ascendance, to chase after our dreams and achieve success since our formation almost 9 years ago.

Our youngest co-founder, Harsha, is a 3-time TEDx speaker, author, and top scoring undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania while running three organizations (Ascendance, Startmyname.com and NextGen Entrepreneurship Network) at 21 years old, thanks to her family’s support ever since she started her entrepreneurial journey at 11 years old.

Our 23-year-old co-founder, Sanadtkumar is a director and filmmaker of his very own multi-award-winning documentary series, ‘Wanted: Shades of Life’ (https://wantedtheseries.com/) and a graduate of Toronto Film School in Canada, while running Ascendance’s on-ground programming thanks to the unwavering support of his parents.

Our 24-year-old co-founder, Heerraa, is an award-winning singer-songwriter and a voting member of The Recording Academy (GRAMMYs) who’s changing the world with music while pursuing her undergraduate studies at Harvard University, thanks to the believe and support of her loved ones.

The oldest amongst us four, Mathura, at 27 years old is a ICAEW Chartered Accountant and CEO of the business incubator, ET Ideas Group advising and guiding over 30 businesses under her wing, thanks to the faith and trust of her family.

Another group of people we owe our gratitude to are the hundreds of teachers and educators who have encouraged their students to participate in our programs over the years. Because of the spirit and drive of these passionate educators, Ascendance is able to continuously improve and evolve our programs to cater to the current needs of students. Thank you for trusting the work that we do!

We also have to thank our corporate and individual sponsors who fund and enable our programs to reach students who need these programs the most. Many of the schools are often in rural communities where students have never heard of youth leadership or the concept of exploring and enhancing their potential. Thanks to our sponsors’ commitment, resources, and time, we can mobilize our efforts in the US as well as across Malaysia and Indonesia.

Finally, we must thank our mentor, Elango Thiyagu, for being our first supporter and inspiring us on this mission to engage our disengaged generation. When Ascendance was only its four founders, Elango was the pillar of support and guidance who instilled confidence in us that young people could positively impact and change the world.

Website: https://AscendancePro.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/AscendancePro

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/AscendancePro

Facebook: https://Facebook.com/AscendancePro

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/AscendancePro

Other: Patreon: https://Patreon.com/AscendancePro TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ascendancepro

Image Credits
All images taken by ET Boost Studio