What do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

By: David Fikes Executive Director, FMI Foundation

I remember being asked as a kid, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" For years, my go-to response was "a professional baseball player." Not because my skills in hitting, fielding or throwing made that a realistic goal, but because it was a profession I admired in a game I loved. As I reached high school, though, the question of "what do I want to do for a living?" became more pressing, especially with college decisions and choosing a major looming ahead. My options felt limited to the few careers I was aware of, and I remember feeling frustrated by how little I knew about the many possibilities out there. I had no idea what paths existed, how to pursue them or if they would truly interest and sustain me.

Hindsight being what it is, I now know career paths are seldom straight lines. In the rearview mirror, I can clearly recognize how experiences in one area led to opportunities in another and ultimately prepared me for work in a profession I never knew existed as a 12-year-old. Over a lifetime, I have learned that vocation is a journey, not a destination.

The goal of FMI Foundation's workforce partnership with Junior Achievement is simple. It is to expose young people starting their career journey to the plethora of vocational opportunities open to them in the food industry. On the other side of the same coin, our goal is to introduce food industry employers to a bevy of curious young people anxious to explore various employment possibilities. In short, we want to give students some new answers to the question "what do you want to be?" and we want to amplify and improve the food industry's reach into the pool of rising young talent.

Junior Achievement and FMI are both national agencies, but we are aware that for our program, Inspiring Careers in Food, to be effective it must happen on the local level. We must make the connection between the local store or office to the local Junior Achievement branch. To help that happen, we have launched a new website designed to help interested food companies learn more about the program possibilities open to them through Junior Achievement and how they can access the ones that make the most organizational sense.

Students and young adults need to be inspired. They are eager to learn about the world around them from people who look like them, who come from the communities where they live, and who work in the businesses and for brands they know. The FMI / Junior Achievement Partnership provides this opportunity, which can change the lives and perspectives of young people and their futures!

Through your company's participation in the Inspiring Careers in Food program, you can achieve two significant accomplishments:

1. Expand a young person's perception of what a career in food might look like, reshaping their view of the industry.
2. A step ahead on recruiting the next generation's star performers, potentially locating the one who climbs the ranks and becomes a future CEO.

Explore the possibilities for your company!

Inspiring Careers in Food     Junior Achievement USA