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Continuing education outside the traditional classroom is important for creating leaders of all ages whether it’s the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation and their undergraduate, graduate or certificate programs designed to provide professionals with the tools they need to accelerate social impact or Junior Achievement of Arizona and their unique programs empowering K-12 students to be successful.

Nonprofit professionals and advocates of a strong workforce will want to tune in to hear how these two organizations are making great strides to build strong communities not just in Arizona, but worldwide!

For the last 60 years, Junior Achievement of Arizona (JA) has been empowering the futures of millions of Arizona students by giving them the knowledge and skills they need to manage their money, plan for their future, and make smart academic, career and economic choices. Delivered by 9,500 business and community volunteer mentors, our hands-on, age-appropriate programs focus on three key areas: financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship.

Serving more than 80,000 students each year and over 2 million since its founding, JA is shaping the college- and career-readiness conversation, and we play an important role in Arizona’s workforce and economic development. Our programs help students connect what they learn in the classroom to the real world, and demonstrate how learning correlates to earning – knowledge critical to empowering today’s students to be successful, contributing members of society in the future. JA-of-Arizona-Green

We serve students with diverse backgrounds and socio-economic status throughout Arizona, with primary focus on providing our programs to students from low-income households.

We are a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization wholly dependent on the financial and volunteer support of individuals, foundations and businesses.

We have two offices – headquartered in Tempe, where our two JA BizTown® facilities are located, and another office in Tucson, serving our Southern Arizona students and partners. We are a member of Junior Achievement USA.

Anne-Landers-on-Phoenix-Business-RadioXAnne Landers is the Senior Director of Marketing and Development for Junior Achievement of Arizona, a Tempe-based nonprofit that prepares 83,000 primarily low-income children to succeed in work and life each year by educating them about financial literacy, career readiness, and entrepreneurial thinking. She has been with the organization for four years and is the organization’s first marketing director in 20 years.

Before coming to JA, she was the Interim Director at an international community development nonprofit, Life In Abundance, where she oversaw the implementation of U.S. based operations of programs abroad.  She  began her career at a start-up advertising and PR agency, David and Sam PR (Decibel Blue), where she was one of the agency’s first two employees.

Anne holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from ASU. She lives in Gilbert with her husband, two soon-to-be school-aged sons and black lab.

Follow JA on LinkedInFacebook and Twitter.

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The ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation is a global leader in advancing understanding and effective philanthropic and nonprofit practice as a distinctive community development strategy.

Through research, education, technical assistance and convenings, the Center focuses on advancing nonprofit leaders and philanthropists to solve problems, to realize a community’s highest aspirations and to accelerate social impact.

Nicole-Almond-Anderson-on-Phoenix-Business-RadioXFor over a decade, Nicole Anderson has worked at Arizona State University where currently she is the Manager of Marketing, Communications and Stakeholder Relations for the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation within the Watts College of Public Service & Community Solutions. She serves as President of the Sun Devil Club’s Young Professionals Group and the Vice President of the ASU Young Alumni Chapter. In 2017, City of Phoenix Mayor Stanton appointed Nicole to the Mayor’s Commission on Disability Issues.

She is a member of the Board of Directors for United Cerebral Palsy of Central Arizona and for the Pitt Hopkins Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to finding a treatment, and an eventual cure, of Pitt Hopkins Syndrome and other similar disorders. She also founded RareiTees for a Cure, a clothing brand created with a unique mission to bring awareness to rare diseases.

Anderson received a BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU, as well as Masters of Nonprofit Leadership and Management from the Watts College of Public Service & Community Solutions at ASU.

Follow ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation On LinkedInFacebook and Twitter.