Educating youth about business today to inspire future business leaders tomorrow.

WELCOME TO Y.L.A.B

Youth Learning About Business

Encouraging SI students with an interest in business to further enhance their knowledge of the way a business operates by visiting successful Bay Area companies and holding educational seminars.

ABOUT THE CLUB

As YLAB has learned over the past three years since its establishment, every business starts with a good idea. Likewise, our school-wide organization began with an idea too. In 2015, Madeleine Bruce came to SI as a freshman with a passion for business and venture capitalism. As someone hungry to learn more about this field, Madeleine was very surprised to find that SI did not have any sort of business-oriented club. She saw a need in the market for such an organization and decided that with her ambitions and excitement around the subject, she would found her own club at St. Ignatius. She would create a model in which students would visit successful Bay Area companies, take a tour of their headquarters, and meet with the CEOs and top executives. The students would then come back and reconvene at school to talk about what they have seen and learned and how they can apply that information to their lives in the future.

YLAB was born in September of 2015 with Kristy Jacobson, an Admissions Associate, as the adult moderator. Maddie knew that to get this club off the ground, she needed members, and a good pitch. YLAB made its debut at the SI Club Faire in October of 2015. To draw in potential members, Maddie strategically made cupcakes with YLAB’s logo on them. If she knew one thing for sure, it was that food attracted teenagers like bees to honey. In their first year, YLAB secured over 50 members and visited over 5 different Bay Area companies, kicking off their first event with the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee. Over the last three years, YLAB has grown exponentially, with over 150 members total.

Fast Forward to the Spring of 2018, Ryan Mandel, a current sophomore at SI, came to Maddie to collaborate on his own innovative entrepreneurial-based ideas. He wanted to bring a more classroom-based experience to members of YLAB by introducing seminars to further their understanding of business-oriented terms. Ryan was given the title of President Elect a month later, and he and Maddie have been working together ever since to make education about business accessible and experiential to all students at St. Ignatius.