Lucia Cape

For the past three years, Cape has served on the board of this organization that provides education in the area of financial literacy, develops workplace skills and raises career awareness in local school-age youth in kindergarten through 12th grade.

“I felt it was important to partner with this organization because its goals mirror several key initiatives that the Chamber and its investors focus on which include creating early career awareness and skills development,” said Cape.

In particular, Cape focuses her efforts on raising awareness of the job shadowing opportunities for high school students and in recruiting employers to get involved in the process. “Junior Achievement has made it easier than ever to participate as both an employer and a job shadow student by putting the registration process online for job availability and program participation,” Cape explained. “Job Shadowing no longer takes place just one month out of the year. Students can now learn about specific career options all year round which increases the ability for students to participate.”

According to Leah Amos, president of JANA, volunteers use their personal experiences to make the Junior Achievement curricula practical and realistic by providing children with positive adult role models, who illustrate ways to build self-confidence, develop skills and find avenues of success in our free enterprise system, is a hallmark of Junior Achievement.

Junior Achievement is the world's largest and fastest-growing non-profit economic education organization. Programs are taught by classroom volunteers from the business community in Huntsville, Madison and Madison County school systems.

"Lucia was a critical component in helping Junior Achievement have such a successful 2008/2009 year," said Amos.