by Adam Benjamin, Co-Founder
Good day to all! My name is Adam Benjamin and I am one of the co-founders here at UpperCampus. On behalf of our company, we hope you, your family, and your friends are healthy and happy. And to those of you in the educational field, a massive thank you for all you are doing for our students during these incredibly uncertain times.
I’d like to take a moment to introduce our company to you, but more importantly tell you our story and our mission.
Between myself and my two business partners, we have been extremely fortunate in our careers to have followed the path of entrepreneurs and have started several companies of our own. We have also worked at some incredible digital organizations such as Facebook, Google, and Oracle— organizations that have helped revolutionize the digital space and online consumer behavior.
Although I am personally proud of my professional accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment thus far is the role I play at home— being a dad. My wife and I have three wonderful children and, as most parents know, there are constant joys and challenges being a parent. Fortunately, a lot more joys!
Parents of high school students will find that the conversation about college starts on day one of freshman year. It's an overwhelming and stressful process for both the student and the parent. When our son entered high school, he had to determine a “track” that he wanted to focus on: business, law, healthcare, or engineering. When we sat down to talk about it, he said, "Dad, I am 14 years old. I have no idea what I should be doing.”
If you ask a parent if their child knows what they want to do when they get older, 9 out of 10 responses will be no. And that is absolutely okay!
My conversation with my son progressed like this:
Dad: “So let’s talk about what you love…what are you interested in?”
Son: “I love Marvel Entertainment.”
Dad: “Do you see yourself ever working for Marvel?”
Son: “How can I? I don’t know how to make movies.”
That’s when it really hit me: these students, our kids, simply don’t know about the endless career opportunities that exist out there for them to pursue. And how would they? They know about what their closest family members do, and maybe what they see on TV or on some social media channels, but they really don’t know the extent of the opportunities that are out there for them. We are failing them, and something needs to change.
That is why we started UpperCampus. Our mission is basic, but big— to connect students to careers that inspire them to do great things. Our students today simply don’t have access to the tools and the content that will allow them to better understand the career opportunities that exist out there. You say you are interested in music and technology? How about working at Amazon on the Alexa product? You love science and food? How about working as a food scientist at Taco Bell? Or maybe you love architecture and environmental science? How about creating green spaces for companies like PepsiCo and Google? As we say here at UpperCampus, the opportunities are endless. Our students just need help stitching it all together, and that's where we come in. We are technologists and builders here at UpperCampus, and we have hired students to help build an incredible product... for students.
So, as we kick off this new school year, we hope to work with every high school and college to bring an entertaining and educational mobile app to as many students as possible. And before I end this, let me also say that our company firmly believes that educational tools like UpperCampus should not cost the school or the student anything. So yes, this is free— no strings!
If you are a high school guidance counselor, a university career counselor, a teacher, or even a parent or a student, and you feel UpperCampus can help, please reach out to us at info@uppercampus.com to get set up or for more information. We are here to help. We look forward to talking to you and working with you to inspire our students to do great things!
All the best,
Adam