About Steve Mariotti

I founded a global entrepreneurship education organization and am proud to advocate for entrepreneurs worldwide.

I am a lifelong reader and book lover. Some of my own books include the Young Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting and Running a Business and An Entrepreneur’s Manifesto, which makes a convincing case for the power of entrepreneurship education to combat poverty, terrorism and totalitarianism. I’ve also written textbooks on entrepreneurship and small business management junior, high-school and college students. I will be publishing several new books in the coming years. In fact, this summer, I will be publishing my latest, Goodbye, Homeboy!

Back in 1982, I left a successful business career to become a public high-school teacher in tough New York City neighborhoods like East New York, Bed-Study, and Fort Apache in the South Bronx. Before that I founded my own company, Mason Import/Export Services, and worked as a Treasury Analyst focused on Latin America and South Africa, at Ford Motor Company.

Frustrated at first by my rowdy classrooms, I discovered that I could actually motivate some of my most challenging students by teaching them how to run a small business. This experience inspired me to create the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) in 1987. Our mission was--and remains--bringing entrepreneurship education to low-income youth, and empowering them to create pathways out of poverty. Today, NFTE is widely considered the leading provider of entrepreneurship education to low-income youth worldwide.