What’s Happening at Berkeley
Berkeley Announces the Lasher Center For Business And Entrepreneurial Studies
Jan 24, 2024
Berkeley Preparatory School is proud to announce the naming of the Lasher Center for Business and Entrepreneurial Studies, following a $1.4 million gift from Karessa and Stuart Lasher. Stuart Lasher is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Quantum Capital Partners Inc., and his family office is based in Tampa.
The center will strengthen Berkeley’s existing financial initiatives, such as the Lasher Business Institute, the BUC Ventures student investment fund, and high school business math classes. It will also expand the school’s business studies reach, which will include an Entrepreneurship Lab, middle school electives on financial literacy, and a business and finance community speaker series.
“The Lashers’ gift will allow Berkeley to take its already impressive commitment to financial education to another level. Financial intelligence is an indispensable life skill, and Berkeley has already developed strong curricular and co-curricular initiatives in business studies, especially with our highly successful Lasher Business Institute, an intensive one-year elective program—now in its fourth year—that is focused on providing Berkeley juniors and seniors substantive, relevant, and integrative instructional experiences in business fundamentals, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship. The Lasher Center for Business and Entrepreneurial Studies will help ensure that all Berkeley students will have significant opportunities to participate in meaningful financial education, which includes not only exposure to such core business skills as finance, accounting, marketing, and management, but also a deep dive into the innovation economy and the entrepreneurial skill set and process,” said Headmaster Joseph Seivold.
Carlo DiNota was named the Director of the Lasher Center for Business and Entrepreneurial Studies. “Stuart Lasher has a contagious passion for promoting financial intelligence, especially among kids,” says DiNota. “Whether a child will pursue business studies in college or not, financial education can positively impact everyone. Core business skills translate into critical everyday skills, and there is zero downside in learning how to budget and manage money, for example, yet it is hard to argue with the fact that financial illiteracy can be extremely costly for an individual and can lead to so many pitfalls down the road. The Lasher Center for Business and Entrepreneurial Studies will provide us even greater flexibility to promote financial intelligence to our student population.”
Lasher, who is a parent of two Berkeley graduates (LJ ’14 and Celeste ’15) and senior Colton ’24 said, “More than seven years ago, the Headmaster and I started discussing the possibility of offering foundational finance courses for Berkeley juniors and seniors. Finance and Business has been such an important part of my life and I have always stressed to my children, and I will instill the same in my grandchildren, the importance of developing financial and business skills. It gives me immense pride to feel that I have played a small part in the financial education of so many students.”