I first met Cristina Cismas Florea when I was in the 2018 Leadership Palo Alto cohort, and was immediately impressed by her ‘math forward’ education for high school students at Gunn High School in Palo Alto California, using a place-based, community outreach platform for applicable, hands-on math skills. Students that joined her after-school math club took on projects as interns to local businesses. Ernst & Young and PriceWaterHouse Cooper gave the BEAM program computational tools that allow high school students to do computational analysis of the business’s budgets and business development plans, in a win-win-win scenario for the local business, the students, and exposure of both to these consulting giants’ capabilities. A shout out to Deborah’s Palm in Palo Alto, a community space that encouraged women-focused self-development through workshops and career training. Though Deborah’s Palm has since closed its doors, mission-based spaces that are collaborative, supportive and generative are very consistently associated with change efforts I’ve witnessed over the years. I was familiar with Deborah’s Palm myself, having taken a Brené Brown workshop (‘The Daring Way’) at this location back in 2016.

In just a few years, BEAM grew organically through a global network of other schools interested in having their own BEAM program. Other communities often wish to emulate the ‘magic formula’ for success that Silicon Valley is believed to exude.

The BEAM program still operates in different cities around the globe, teaching high school students how to engage with numbers, predictive analyses, and computational processes in business settings, while local businesses provide a place for local youth to learn from hands-on experience.