A 16-week real-client career experience for grades 11–12. Twenty-four students take on one real, bounded challenge from a real company, then defend their recommendations directly to that company. Delivered in your building by a trained moderator.
Students meet professionals, hear speakers and complete simulated projects. Useful — but none of it answers the question that decides a first job: can this person walk into a real professional situation, understand what matters, contribute useful work, and be trusted to follow through?
C.O.R.E. is built around that question. A real company brings a real problem it actually cares about. The Avant Order Foundation shapes it into six connected workstreams so twenty-four students each hold defined responsibility. Students research, build, test, revise and integrate — then present evidence and recommendations to the company in a two-hour Final Client Defense and answer its questions.
A challenge has to be real enough to matter and bounded enough to teach. C.O.R.E. does not accept generic "make us a marketing campaign" assignments. The company must genuinely care about the problem, students must be able to make real progress in sixteen weeks, and the work must be doable without any confidential information.
The student cohort does not begin until the company partner and the challenge are confirmed in writing.
The client is named to the school before any agreement is signed. Challenges are matched on student interest, scheduling and relevance.
A challenge design session, a 60-minute kickoff, and the two-hour defense. Companies are never asked to teach, mentor weekly, or promise internships.
Sixteen consecutive weekly blocks is the hardest thing this program asks of a school, so it gets settled first. Two configurations work.
A scheduled period, one block per week for sixteen weeks. Cleanest attendance and highest completion. Requires a schedule slot and an elective code.
Immediately after dismissal, one 90-minute block per week. No schedule impact. Often fundable through an after-school prime partner already under contract.
The sixteen-week plan is built against your school calendar at configuration, with planned skips for testing windows, breaks and known interruptions.
A concise explanation of the organization, challenge, stakeholders, constraints and the student's own workstream.
Research, sources, stakeholder evidence and the reasoning that shaped the recommendation.
A finished artifact, prototype, analysis, strategy or process tied to the real challenge.
A professional account of what the team learned, built, changed and recommends.
Structured feedback from the company on usefulness, thinking, professionalism, execution and communication.
A student-facing record of what was demonstrated, plus a 90-day plan for what the student does next.
Cohorts can be requisitioned through normal school channels, or subcontracted through an after-school prime partner already under contract.
Every staff member assigned to a school completes that district's established screening and clearance process before the first session. No adult meets with a student alone.
Student work, portfolios and records remain with the school and the student. Reporting is aggregate. No personally identifiable student information leaves the building.
The Avant Order Foundation. EIN 42-2144852. IRS determination April 29, 2026. Board: Donnel R. Smith (Chair), Phil Goldson, Devon Barber.
All contact between company personnel and students happens in scheduled, moderated sessions — never direct or private.
Photo, video, name and testimonial permissions are held by the school and are never assumed from participation.
One cohort of 24 juniors and seniors, delivered in your building against your calendar. You supply students, a room and a weekly block. We supply everything else — including the company.
Next step: a 30-minute call to check schedule fit, then the full proposal.
A complete, self-staffed 27-hour program block for extended-day contracts. Attendance and contact hours reported in your format, mapped to your deliverables. No prime staff required in the room.
Next step: we send the capability document with full compliance documentation.
Frierson began producing records in New York City as a teenager, as an early member of The Hitmen, the in-house production team at Bad Boy Records. His credits include work on albums by The Notorious B.I.G., Big Pun, LL Cool J, Fat Joe, Faith Evans and 112, among them two albums that reached number one on the Billboard 200.
He went on to build a music licensing catalog of more than 5,000 songs, placed with film studios, television networks and brands including Gatorade, Pepsi and AT&T. In 2025 he launched Unstuck Global, a performance advisory firm working with executives and entrepreneurs on leadership and organizational performance. His production career is documented on Wikipedia.
A career built on being handed real work as a teenager in New York City — and a program built to hand the same thing to students who have not been offered it.
Governance. The Avant Order Foundation is directed by a board of three. Chair Donnel R. Smith is a practicing middle school computer science teacher, technology coordinator and assistant curriculum writer, and reviews C.O.R.E.'s curriculum and session design for feasibility inside a real school building.
Affiliations are listed for identification only and do not imply endorsement by any employer.
Send your school or organization, the configuration you're considering, and a window for a 30-minute call. We'll return the full proposal and a schedule fit check.