Costa Mesa elementary school students learning tricks of the business trade
Friday afternoon can be a tough time to concentrate for any student.
The students in Amy Meunier-Bogdan’s fourth-grade class at Victoria Elementary School in Costa Mesa, however, count it as one of their favorite times of the week.
Their eyes are transfixed on the big screen in the front of the class every Friday at 1:15 p.m., as they hop on a Zoom call with some high-ranking business executives.
The 15-minute session each week — short enough for the attention span of a 9-year-old — allows the students to learn from employees of Costa Mesa-based artificial intelligence company Veritone.
Meunier-Bogdan came up with the idea as the school year began and her class was studying business during the first few weeks of school.
“We were talking about inventors and entrepreneurs, and they were just really having a lot of fun with it,” Meunier-Bogdan said. “They were learning about Thomas Edison, and the Wright Bros. Then we got into our current inventions with things like Apple and Google, and we started talking about different types of public companies.”
She mentioned to the kids that her husband, Scott, worked for Veritone as a senior vice president of operations. He was one of the founders of the company in 2014.
“I went home that night and I thought it would be so cool for these kids, especially since I’m in a lower socio-economic school, to have access to some of these influential business leaders,” Meunier-Bogdan said.
About 64% of the students at Victoria Elementary are categorized as economically disadvantaged.
“I just thought it would be cool to pair these two up,” Meunier-Bogdan said. “My students could hear more about the actual business world, and how great it would be for some of [the Veritone] executives to reach out and help a community school.”
Meunier-Bogdan has a blended family with her husband, with five children ranging from eighth grade to Corona del Mar High School seniors. The blending of their two careers was born in early September.
The 15-minute Zoom session each week is informative, but light for the students. They get to ask questions, but also laugh and tell jokes. Meunier-Bogdan appoints a student as a CEO and a president, and they get to be in front for the meeting and introduce themselves to the executives.
Each week there’s a different topic. The students heard from Hector Morales, a Veritone customer success manager who grew up in poverty in Compton but went on to get scholarships to UC Berkeley.
They also talked to Julie Harding, the company’s vice president of people operations.
“She was talking about qualities she looks for in hiring candidates for jobs — hard-working, and people that are good communicators, people that can work on a team,” Meunier-Bogdan said. “That was a pretty powerful one, as well.”
Billie Whittaker, a student in the fourth-grade class at Victoria, said she has learned a lot about stocks and money during this fall’s sessions. The students also made their own businesses in class.
“It’s really fun and it’s really interesting,” Billie said of the Zoom time with Veritone. “I feel really special that we’re the class that gets to do it.”
Scott Bogdan said the sessions have also been well-received by the executives within the company.
“I see the little glimmer in their eyes,” he said. “It’s fun giving back, too. It’s been a great little morale booster internally. Everyone’s jockeying for when they get to go do a session with the kiddos.”
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