Our Story

The Youthpreneur Initiative was founded by Lucas Williams, at the beginning of his junior year at New Canaan High School (NCHS) to provide students like himself the opportunities to learn from, network, and interact with well-established entrepreneurs. Lucas grew up in Essex, England, in a working-class town with no exposure to innovation or entrepreneurship. After moving to New Canaan, CT, he soon noticed a concentration of success, wealth, and knowledge contained within the town, yet also noticed a key problem; there was no active effort to spread this knowledge. It became his goal to change this.

Prior to the Youthpreneur Initiative, in his sophomore year, Lucas founded a club at NCHS called the New Canaan Entrepreneur Association as a potential remedy to this issue. Throughout the year, he hosted events and speakers at the school who shared their entrepreneurial experiences and insights. Attendance trended upwards with each event, and it became clear to Lucas his mission was having an impact - so he set to work on expanding this model into the surrounding area and formed the Youthpreneur Initiative.

Today the Youthpreneur Initiative hosts speakers across high-schools in Fairfield County, with the goal of building bridges between students and the entrepreneurial world - enabling them to learn, network and follow in other’s footsteps on the path to success. Additionally, the organization aims to provide assistance to aspiring ‘youthpreneurs’ through competitions where prizes include small seed funding - providing the capital for an individuals idea to take root and flourish.