'It's in the Country's Best Interest for Poor Folks to Be Smart'

Underlying that recent outpouring of support are 10 years of carefully cultivated relationships, people who supported Wade even when his first attempt at a nonprofit sputtered. Juan Torres, a lawyer at New York law firm Anderson Kill & Olick, was hooked on Wade's idea the minute that Wade arrived as a summer associate there in 1994. But Wade realized that, as a nonprofit, the company could build only one school that would have the standards he wanted -- not a network that could create a widespread movement. So Wade tried again 20 months ago as a for-profit. Torres's law-school friend, Issac Vaughn, a lawyer at Silicon Valley powerhouse Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, helped arrange the initial financing round for LearnNow. Explaining why he bet on Wade, Vaughn says that "Gene had the focus and the patience necessary to succeed."

Meanwhile, Sanford Gilmore, who is a director of the organization that ran the leadership-development course for Wade in high school, helped LearnNow create the conceptual model for the network of schools. Thomas Stewart, vice president of community and client development at LearnNow, has known Wade for 10 years as well. But he didn't join the venture merely out of friendship or out of a sense of personal obligation. "There's a delicate balance between business and education. The two are coming together out of absolute necessity because the economy requires it," says Stewart, 39, who, until recently, ran a charter school in Washington, dc. "Gene has the wherewithal to balance that, because he doesn't have a bias in one direction or the other. He's setting the tone for how to mesh nonprofit, public-sector, and private-sector cultures so that we can learn from one another."

And then there's James Shelton, LearnNow's 34-year-old president and cofounder. Wade and Shelton met on a businesss-school panel about the business of education. They might as well have written each other's scripts. As it turns out, they had essentially the same business plan: to build a network of schools with a focus on math, science, and technology for low-income kids. Both of them envisioned T-1 lines hooked up to computers in every classroom, with technology training integrated into every subject. Shelton joined Wade at a venture-capital meeting later that day. Armed with an MBA from Stanford and with operations experience at a teacher-support company, Shelton was sold.

The Education Difference

What makes such faith in Gene Wade so remarkable is that he has never run a business before. Yet he is focused on his idea, and he doesn't jump at financing deals withthe impatience of a rookie. He isn't afraid to make tough decisions; friends can't slack off on deadlines. And he can execute: By the first board meeting, he and his team had secured four charters, had hired a staff, and had begun planning for eight more charters.

At a time when there is a lot of competition in the business of education, what makes Wade's enterprise so different? For one thing, LearnNow isn't just trying to redirect mismanaged public funds. Rather, it's trying to reverse the mismanagement of students' intellect. And it's doing so by taking the best in education and in community building and turning that into a self-sustaining business. "I don't want such legendary teachers as Jaime Escalante or Lorraine Monroe to be unique," Wade says. "I want them to be the norm."

LearnNow's network of schools is an attempt to create an educational brand that delivers on that goal. The brand represents an institution where every child is told that he can perform as well as the next -- the simple message that Wade's early teachers had driven home. And the brand supports that endeavor by inviting children, particularly members of racial-minority groups, into the high-tech economy. This is no small task considering that LearnNow's brand represents a hybrid public-private institution, one that's effecting change from both inside and outside the system. "What makes LearnNow unique is its explicit philosophy to include public education in its effort to change the way that we educate all kids," says Rudy Crew, 50, who is now executive director of the University of Washington K-12 Leadership Institute.

LearnNow hopes to prepare children for the high-tech economy in a few distinct ways. One is a relentless focus on math and on literacy. In August, LearnNow teachers and instruction designers attended boot camp in these subjects. In turn, they'll teach students -- regardless of the grade -- two hours of math and reading every day. Ultimately, students will have an internship where they apply their skills to the demands of high-tech businesses.