The Golden State Warriors and Chase today announced a $250,000 donation to College Track as part of the final session of the Financial Gameplan: Small Business Impact Series. Over the course of seven weeks, the series led Bay Area students through an educational program to build a business plan for Ahmed’s Moving Express, a locally-owned Chase small business client.
Warriors guard Stephen Curry presented the $250,000 donation and congratulated the students for completing the series.
The final session featured College Track students from Oakland, San Francisco and East Palo Alto who pitched their business plans for Ahmed’s Moving Express to athletes and business professionals, including Warriors Assistant Coach Mike Brown; guard Damion Lee; Chief Legal Officer, Business and Basketball, David Kelly; Ahmed and Sherry from Ahmed’s Moving Express, Karla Lee, JPMorgan Chase Managing Director-Regional Director of Consumer and Wealth; and Lawrence Bailey, Head of Community and Business Development for JPMorgan Chase.
BUILD, dedicated to proving the power of experiential learning through entrepreneurship and igniting the potential of youth in under-resourced communities, engaged with College Track students throughout the duration of this program. Each week’s lesson followed a business planning track, including:
- Week 1: Welcome & Empathize; the students familiarized themselves with Ahmed’s Moving Express and the company’s challenges
- Week 2: Define; students identified the issues and opportunities for the company
- Week 3: Ideate; the group imagined all possible products and strategies to enhance the business operations
- Week 4: Prototype; students built a model of the new system
- Week 5: Test; the group tested their model
- Week 6: Practice; students practiced and finalized their model and their pitch for the panel of judges
- Week 7: Pitch; on the final week, the students showcased their work for the panel of judges
Ahmed’s Moving Express, located in San Rafael, Calif., was founded in 1997 by Ahmed Issa, a native of Tanzania Africa. He attended the College of Marin, where he studied business administration and English as his second language. Following the purchase of his first moving van in 1997, he purchased his first office space in San Rafael in 2004 and since then, has steadily grown the business to where it is at today, a trusted, reliable moving company serving customers across the nation.
Launched in January 2020, the Financial Gameplan series serves students from College Track, a comprehensive college completion program that equips students confronting systemic barriers to earn a bachelor’s degree in pursuit of a life of opportunity, choice and power. College Track has been a grantee of the Warriors Community Foundation since 2014, with the organization receiving over $282,000 in impact. The first Financial Gameplan cohort included 80 Bay Area students, with over 100 students expected to participate in the first year combined.