Marie Schwartz (MBA 1985) is founder and CEO of TeenLife Media, which produces online and print directories of STEM, gap year, pre-college, overnight summer, and community service programs for students in grades 7 through 12. In this video, she talks about the inspiration for the business and its impact on both students and their parents.

“Harvard really gave me the ability to translate my ideas—which I had many of—and make them into visions. So, Harvard was a wonderful complement to the other experiences I had in my life, and it really allowed me to bring out the things that I was passionate about.

“In 2003, my family moved to Boston. My children were in middle school and I felt that they weren’t getting the kind of experiential learning I had had as a child. Where could my kids go during the summer, or after school, so they’re not just sitting at home, not just playing video games. I found out that there was no resource.

“I started putting a list together of all the summer programs I read about and searched for, and it became a guide, a printed guide. So, for two years, I was a volunteer who did this on the side, while I worked somewhere else. And the parents were incredibly appreciative of that resource. So, in 2008, I had just finished a year of working on another business and I was able to commit myself fully to TeenLife.

“The training I had [at HBS] really helped me understand that this was going to take a while. Once I started committing myself fully to TeenLife, it became an online business, and seven to eight years later we’re the largest search engine for out-of-school enrichment for students in middle and high school. We have licensing agreements with national partners like Hobsons; we publish six different guides, both electronically and in print; and we host virtual events.

“Parents love us. High school counselors recommend that families look at TeenLife.com to find whether there’s a summer program or a gap program that meets that student’s interests. It just saves everybody lots and lots of time.”

(Published January 2016)

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