Teagan O’Carroll, 18, has worked for two years as a coordinator at the James Anthony Salon in Oak Park. During that time she has trained a few new employees.
But she was struck by how long it took to get some people proficient in their new jobs.
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“I just found that the onboarding process and the training experience was incredibly inefficient and it took way longer than it should have, not necessarily for me, but for a lot of people that I personally trained,” O’Carroll said. “Traditional training methods like listening to your manager talk for hours and taking notes just is not effective for everyone.”
So when O’Carroll, of Oak Park, had to come up with an idea for a business for the Business Incubator class she took this year as a senior at Oak Park and River Forest High School, she thought of developing an interactive onboarding and training app that would customize the onboarding and training process.
“I just wanted to create a platform that makes it easier for people with a variety of different learning abilities or styles to train efficiently in the workplace,” O’Carroll said.
O’Carroll and classmates Symone Archie McWhorter, who like O’Carroll graduated from OPRF on June 1, junior Michayla Marks and sophomore Cheslynn Ash, called their business Orbit. Orbit was one of 18 teams from the three sections of the Business Incubator class at OPRF that squared off in a months long “Shark Tank” style competition during the school year. After the final round on May 22, Orbit emerged with a narrow victory.
The prototype for the Orbit app consisted of a reading module, a testing module and a video module that businesses could customize to individually guide new employees.
“It feels unreal,” O’Carroll said. “The competition was incredibly tight.”
Each of the Orbit team members receive a $1,000 scholarship. O’Carroll is headed to Central Michigan University to study business communications and marketing while Archie McWhorter is headed to San Diego State University. The money for the scholarships is provided by the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation.
O’Carroll had the title of visionary for Orbit, Archie McWhorter handled creative design, including designing a company logo, Ash was the chief financial officer, what Orbit called Keeper of the Coin, while Marks was the customer champion handling customer relations.
“We all connected very well and worked very well together,” O’Carroll said.
O’Carroll said that Business Incubator class, which is a dual credit class with Triton College, just further fueled her passion for entrepreneurship. Her interest in entrepreneurship comes, in part, from her father, Fergus, who has developed a marketing podcast called On Strategy Showcase. Her mother, Gayle O’Carroll, is vice president of digital sales at Univision.
“I thought I knew what I wanted to do but this class made me positive of what I want to do,” O’Carroll said. “It really taught me so much.”
She loved the class.
“I would take it a million times over,” O’Carroll said.
O’Carroll said that she learned a lot about teamwork and working with others.
“This class has taught me so much,” O’Carroll told the OPRF District 200 School Board at a May 22 meeting where the Orbit team members were recognized right after their victory. “It has taught me how to collaborate well with others.”
O’Carroll and her classmates’ confidence as public speakers grew during the year as they learned how to make pitches to potential investors as they raised capital for their businesses.
“They grew in their confidence and skills as future business people,” said OPRF business teacher Melissa Martinez who taught two of three sections of the Business Incubator class including the one that the Orbit team members were in.
One of the four local business people serving as judges in the contest was School Board member Graham Brisben.
“The Orbit team demonstrated that they really put the work in and these business plans are never going to be perfect but they did a really thorough job of presenting well, doing the research, talking to people in their intended market and also their business derived from some of their real world life experiences because a number of them had part time jobs in small businesses,” said Brisben who owns a supply chain consulting firm.
The class was just one of a number of business classes O’Carroll took at OPRF.
“I really love the business courses at OPRF,” O’Carroll said. “They’re so beneficial.”
This was the third consecutive year that an all-girl team won the Business Incubator class’s “Shark Tank” competition. This year all the all-girls teams made it to the finals of the competition.
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“The girl teams were lethal,” Martinez said.
Martinez, who worked in marketing for 13 years before becoming a teacher, is actively recruiting more girls to take business classes at OPRF.
“We’re trying to recruit more girls and open their minds, you know, that business is not just for boys,” Martinez said.
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.