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ABOUT OUR COMPANY
At Young CEO Squad, we're transforming elementary-age entrepreneurship education with hands-on learning in the classroom.
Hello I'm Suzanne Appel
I spent 25 years in corporate marketing always feeling like the entrepreneur in the room — the one itching to build something of my own. Starting Young CEO Squad in 2019 was, honestly, me teaching myself to be an entrepreneur so I could turn around and teach others. It's the same reason I'm deep in AI now: I'm learning it so that I can teach it as a tool for kid entrepreneurs.​
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Then life did what life does. My mom got sick, my kids were suddenly home doing Zoom school, I got laid off — and I had to make guacamole out of it all. In the middle of that chaos, I watched my own kids start a collectibles business online — figuring out pricing, adapting when things didn't sell — and light up with a kind of confidence no worksheet ever gave them. That was the "A Ha!" at my kitchen table moment.
Because here's what I know in my bones: brilliant entrepreneurial thinking doesn't show up on a report card. Some of the sharpest, most resourceful kids are the ones getting discouraged in school, when really they're just wired to learn by doing. I refuse to let those kids be left behind — especially in communities with fewer opportunities.
So I put real businesses into classrooms. Today Young CEO Squad is in 300+ classrooms nationwide, and every kit sold helps fund workshops and scholarships so opportunity never depends on a zip code. I'm a solo founder, a mom, and I'm on a mission to raise a generation of confident creators — one kid business at a time.
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My husband, Scott, has heard many of my zany ideas (patient man) and he actually really liked this one. We are raising our two kids in Agoura Hills, CA, a down-to-earth community North of Los Angeles with great schools and lots of wild rabbits.
Mindset, Financial Literacy and an AI-Powered Future
The biggest worry I hear from moms is that the world is changing so fast they don't know what to prepare their kids for. The jobs keep shifting. The tools keep shifting. The old "follow the path" advice doesn't feel like a guarantee anymore.
Here's the good news: you don't have to predict the future to prepare your kid for it.
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Mindset is where it starts. When a kid runs a real business, some things sell and some things sit on the table. They adjust. They try the next thing. That's problem-solving, flexibility, and resilience, built the only way they get built: by doing something real and having it not go perfectly. A kid who has already worked through a flop and come out the other side doesn't panic when the tools change. They adapt.
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Financial literacy stops being abstract the moment there's real money involved. Kids set a price, track what they spend, and calculate their ROI. Margin, profit, and cost aren't vocabulary words anymore. They're decisions the kid made and can explain.
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An AI-powered future doesn't change what your kid needs. It raises the value of it. As the tools get faster, the advantage shifts to the people who can spot a problem worth solving, work through it when the first answer doesn't hold, and keep moving when the ground shifts. Those are the skills entrepreneurship teaches, and they travel with your kid into whatever comes next.
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Young CEO Squad is a hands-on entrepreneurship education company. We put real businesses into classrooms with our Workshop in a Box, and kids from grade 3 through early adulthood build, price, market, and sell an actual product, then calculate their ROI. We're in 300+ classrooms nationwide.
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Mission
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But not all budding entrepreneurs have the financial means or family support to get them started. Young CEO Squad is on a mission to provide opportunities to kids who have the drive to be entrepreneurs but not the means. We're starting with providing free products now and working toward our goal of creating college scholarships to low income families as we grow.
You can sponsor a Young CEO Start-Up unit for an underprivileged community. We have a waiting list of schools and organizations that we are actively seeking funding for. If you or your company would like to help, please tell us here.
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Let's bring out that young entrepreneur inside our kids. Let's encourage them to find solutions to everyday problems by creating products or services that can benefit our communities. Let's see what they are capable of!