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IEI First in Future: Jessica Hong, DECA President at Apex Friendship High School

First in Future: Where Emerging Ideas Take Flight is a weekly program from the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) at NC State University that connects you with people thinking big thoughts about the future of North Carolina. Each week, we talk with business leaders, elected officials, researchers and people working bottom up and top down to make North Carolina great. We hope you’ll use their thinking to jumpstart your thinking about our state—where it is and where we might go together.

This week, we talk to Jessica Hong, a junior at Apex Friendship High School and president of her school’s DECA club, an organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, hospitality and management. As entrepreneurship becomes ever more important to the American economy, we talk to this 17-year-old—the youngest guest ever on First in Future!—about the business of business, and why young people should care.

Watch First in Future each Tuesday on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Channel at 8:30 p.m., or listen to the podcast on iTunes or at emergingissues.org. Visit UNC-TV for specific show air dates, and find your local TV listing here: .

Know a North Carolinian who’d be a great guest for our podcast? We want to connect with the people you know – the forward-thinkers, the problem-solvers, the futurists, the leaders, the movers and shakers and changemakers. Scour your LinkedIn and cross-check your Rolodex; if you know someone working to make North Carolina a better place to work, live and play, we want to talk with them! Submit your guest ideas here!

This installment of First in Future is part of a special TV series produced in collaboration with UNC-TV, and is recorded in UNC-TV’s Studios. Taped segments will air on the North Carolina Channel. Visit www.ncchannel.org/schedule/ for specific air dates.

Listen to the podcast: