YEA was created in February 2007 by Awad Sayeed and Kyle Wong, who were both juniors at Brooklyn Technical High School at the time. It was created as a response to a lack of business education at the high school. YEA soon took off at the school and opened two new branches within a year, at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and Mission High School in San Francisco.
The humble beginnings of YEA only underscore our point further. That is, young people can and will get the job done; they can do amazing things, you just need to give them the tools. And that’s been our mission since day one.