Little Rock author highlights journey at entrepreneurship conference

Northwest Arkansas educators recently learned about the benefits of entrepreneurship education, participated in entrepreneurial activities, and heard from a Little Rock author and her book series co-authored by her son and inspired by her daughter, who wants to be a banker.

The third annual Enspire Conference, hosted Nov. 14 in Fayetteville by Ohio-based Young Entrepreneurs Institute at University School, featured multiple speakers, networking opportunities and entrepreneurship education resources.

Attendees comprised about 100 educators and community supporters, including the Bessie Moore Center for Economic Education at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville-based Startup Junkie, and Economics Arkansas. Sponsors included the Walton Family Foundation, which provided more than $1.21 million to expand Young Entrepreneurs Institute to Northwest Arkansas.

“Entrepreneurial education is not just about creating the next generation of business owners, not at all,” Marion Dunagan, director of the Young Entrepreneurs Institute in Northwest Arkansas. “If that happens, wonderful. If a kid wants to start a business, that is a terrific outcome. But it is not the outcome that we’re looking for today. Entrepreneurial education is about teaching our students to think creatively to solve problems, and most importantly … embrace failure as part of learning.”

She said educators create the environment “where students feel safe to try things, to fail and then try them again.” Educators support students when they come to them with “a crazy idea” and help them “figure out how we can make this happen.”

Dunagan said Young Entrepreneurs Institute has been receiving data on entrepreneurial education to show that it works. Young Entrepreneurs Institute collaborated with the University of Missouri to develop a tool to measure growth in entrepreneurial mindsets.

This summer, Young Entrepreneurs Institute hosted a pilot at Roo’s World, an after-school and summer program in Rogers, “and we demonstrated statistically significant growth in the mindsets that we’ve been targeting.” This came after students experienced four to five hours of entrepreneurial curriculum.

“This is a big deal,” Dunagan said. “We are shifting mindsets. Empathy, failing forward, teamwork, communications — all of these things are impacted by entrepreneurial education.”

Jeff Amerine, founder of Startup Junkie and the conference emcee, highlighted the positive impact of his educators, leading him to establish nine startups. One was a physics and chemistry teacher at Harrison High School who encouraged her students to compete in science and engineering fairs.

Amerine said he was shy, and the experience of competing in the science and engineering fairs “made a lot of difference.” Another educator who made a positive impact taught a new ventures course in graduate school while he was in the military. It was the first time he saw himself as a potential business owner or entrepreneur.

“Teachers, professors can make a big difference,” Amerine said. “The key to a lot of this is catching these kids, inspiring them when they’re in K-12.”

‘ELLA THE BANKER’
Shamim Okolloh, a Little Rock author and banker, was a featured speaker at the conference along with her 10-year-old daughter, Ella Sprinkle, who wants to be a banker and is the main character in the “Ella The Banker” book series. Okolloh and her son, Liam Sprinkle, co-authored the books.

The book series was inspired by Ella, who as a first-grader wanted to become a banker after spending time with her mother and other bankers. Okolloh, a Kenya native, is vice president, community outreach officer at Encore Bank in Little Rock.

“It all started with a spark with Liam when he was in third grade,” Okolloh said. “His class read ‘Harry Potter.’”

After reading it, Liam said he would’ve written the ending differently. This led him to want to write his own stories. Okolloh said she took out equity in her home in March 2023 to support his idea to be an author. U.S. Bank provided support for the second book that’s also available in Spanish: “Ella The Banker: Let Us Save.”

She said U.S. Bank and other supporters, including Economics Arkansas, Encore Bank and First Community Bank, raised about $10,000 to place “Ella The Banker” in every elementary school in Arkansas, including charter and private schools.

BECOMING AN AUTHOR
In spring 2023, Okolloh spent time on YouTube researching how to become an author. She also brought Liam and Ella to bookstores to imagine their book on the shelf.

At the time, she was speaking to first grade students about financial literacy and becoming a banker. She recalled a student asking whether she’d been at the bank while it was being robbed. She said the bank had been robbed but at another branch. She left the talk feeling the banking industry had failed to tell the story of what’s exciting about banking, and that to first graders, it was robberies.

“So I saw a gap and an opportunity,” Okolloh said.

Her daughter, Ella, wanted to be a banker. Her son, Liam, wanted to be an author. And she collaborated with her son to write about banking. “That was how ‘Ella The Banker’ came about.”

“It took us a year and seven days to go from ideation to a published book,” Okolloh said. The book is about a field trip to a bank, and to make the story whimsical, a money slide was included. The money slide is typically “the biggest hit” at author readings, she said. Children “love the money slide.”

Okolloh said with support from Little Rock-based nonprofit Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, she hired a public relations firm, and her children worked with a media coach to prepare for interviews.

“We were thrown from just being a regular family into the limelight,” she said. They’ve been featured in live TV interviews, spoke at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and have been invited to Wall Street next summer.

ON THE SHELF
She said on the day her family adopted a cat, she needed to use the restroom next door at Barnes & Noble in Little Rock. She was surprised to see her book on the shelf, and it was a full-circle moment from when she asked her children to imagine their book there.

“That’s a big retailer to break into, especially for hard copies,” she said. “So we were very grateful to do that.”

Ella Sprinkle said work on a third book is underway and will include a new character, their adopted cat. “His name is Cosmo, and we got to save a lot for him because he’s really expensive.”

During the government shutdown, Okolloh said she received a patent on “Ella The Banker” and joked that the patent office wasn’t closed in the shutdown. The process to receive the registered trademark started more than two years ago, before the manuscript was completed. Ella Sprinkle had to provide her consent because she’s a living person and listed on the patent.

“I did not wake up and say, ‘I want to be an author,’” Okolloh said. “It was my kiddos’ idea. I just was able to supercharge it as a mom.”

Using online platform YIPPEE Exchange, educators can book Okolloh and Liam and Ella Sprinkle to visit their classrooms for a presentation and question-and-answer session with students. The “Ella The Banker” books are also available on YIPPEE Exchange and Amazon.