Invitation to Join the Board of Directors

Design Team Collaboration

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Betsy DeVos,

 

I am writing to invite your participation on the Board of Directors of the Design Team Collaboration, a youth, education, innovation, and philanthropic leadership initiative designed to prepare students for the future of work, higher education, artificial intelligence, civic responsibility, and entrepreneurship.

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Your experience as former U.S. Secretary of Education, combined with your long-standing commitment to education reform, makes you uniquely aligned with this initiative. The Design Team Collaboration connects youth with doctors, engineers, consultants, inventors, entrepreneurs, and civic leaders through real innovation and philanthropic projects beginning as early as the summer after 9th grade and continuing through college graduation.

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This program originated from my transition in 1997 from traditional employment into entrepreneurship, research, and development. Today, that long-term vision is intersecting with a critical national moment. Students are facing rising education costs, uncertain career paths, AI-driven job disruption, and a growing need for stronger leadership, technical literacy, and civic understanding.

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The Design Team Collaboration provides a foresight solution by giving students meaningful mentorship, applied project experience, and direct exposure to innovation before they make major education and career decisions. I believe a bachelor’s degree remains an important foundation for a contributing, intelligent populace, but education must now be connected to real-world purpose, production, leadership, and public benefit.

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This initiative also aligns with my civil leadership work through We the People iVote.org, including the iVote 4th Check & Balance, which is designed to involve constituents more directly in the priorities and decisions of organizations receiving public funds, including federal and state agencies, universities, cities, and economic development organizations.

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The broader platform includes the Machine Design Network, focused on robotics, humanoids, automation, equipment design, fabrication, and manufacturing, along with the Midlink International Collaboration Center, envisioned as an innovation corridor connecting the United States, Canada, South America, and international youth collaboration.

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The Midlink ICC is the healing palm for the nations: a place where young people from different countries can build friendships, discipline, teamwork, and leadership by doing difficult things together. This is how youth success paths, employment pipelines, innovation, and philanthropy can be cross-aligned for long-term national and global impact.

 

Michigan has powerful examples in W.K. Kellogg and Henry Ford, who demonstrated how innovation, education, production, and philanthropy can create lasting civic value. With more than 99,000 foundations in existence, this is the time to align philanthropic capital with youth development, workforce readiness, entrepreneurship, and civic leadership.

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I would be honored to discuss your potential involvement as a board participant, senior advisor, or strategic education and philanthropy leader. Your insight could help shape the educational structure, strengthen public credibility, attract aligned partners, and position this initiative for state, national, and international impact.

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The next five to ten years will define who owns the future. I believe the Design Team Collaboration can help students become the builders, leaders, innovators, employers, and philanthropists their communities need.

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Core Invitation Strategy

• Invite Secretary DeVos to help shape a national youth-to-leadership pipeline that begins in high school and continues through college graduation.

• Position her participation as a continuation of her lifelong education focus, but now connected to the urgent realities of AI, automation, entrepreneurship, workforce transition, and civic accountability.

• Present the Design Team Collaboration as a practical solution to one of the largest education dilemmas: students are being asked to invest heavily in education without enough clarity on future careers, technology disruption, or return on investment.

• Frame her board role as helping students connect education, purpose, discipline, faith in their future, civic responsibility, and real-world achievement.

• Emphasize that this initiative does not replace traditional education; it amplifies education by attaching it to mentorship, innovation, business formation, research, and measurable outcomes.

Youth & Education Strategic Points

• Build a mentorship pathway beginning as early as the summer after 9th grade, continuing through college graduation.

• Give youth early access to doctors, engineers, consultants, entrepreneurs, inventors, civic leaders, and philanthropists.

• Help students understand why higher education matters before they commit to major education debt.

• Strengthen the connection between bachelor’s degree attainment, applied intelligence, leadership, and contribution to society.

• Create a structured bridge between classroom learning and real innovation projects.

• Develop student confidence by placing them in serious environments where they contribute to research, design, business planning, and philanthropic projects.

• Provide young people with a disciplined success path before AI and automation displace traditional entry-level opportunities.

• Create a “learn by contributing” model where students are not merely observers but active participants in meaningful initiatives.

• Help students build portfolios of real project experience before entering college, internships, graduate school, or the workforce.

• Rotate youth through leadership discussions so they learn decision-making, communication, responsibility, and organizational discipline.

• Encourage international youth friendships through shared projects, creating trust, global awareness, and lifelong collaboration networks.

• Promote education as a pathway to ownership, leadership, entrepreneurship, and public service, not merely employment.

Business & Economic Development Goals

• Connect youth education to business formation through Design Team Collaboration, Machine Design Network, and the Midlink International Collaboration Center.

• Build a pipeline where students can move from idea generation to prototype, prototype to manufacturing, and manufacturing to company formation.

• Support robotics, automation, humanoids, AI, medical technology, emergency informatics, advanced manufacturing, and equipment design.

• Create a long-term talent development system for Michigan, the Midwest, the United States, Canada, South America, and international partners.

• Position Midlink ICC as an innovation corridor where education, business, philanthropy, and manufacturing reinforce each other.

• Develop new employment pathways for students before they are forced into uncertain job markets.

• Align philanthropic funding with measurable economic outcomes: student success, business launches, workforce development, job creation, and community revitalization.

• Use the Design Team Collaboration as a feeder system for startups, research teams, production companies, civic initiatives, and nonprofit programs.

• Create a practical response to AI-driven job transition by preparing students to become builders, operators, founders, technicians, designers, and leaders.

• Encourage foundations, investors, universities, and economic development agencies to fund programs that produce visible, measurable, scalable outcomes.

Strategic Value for Betsy DeVos

• Gives her an opportunity to help define the next generation of education reform through applied innovation and youth mentorship.

• Allows her to support education improvement beyond policy debate by helping build a working model with measurable student outcomes.

• Positions her as a national-level education leader helping students prepare for AI-era careers and entrepreneurship.

• Creates a strong Michigan-rooted platform with national and international scalability.

• Aligns with themes she has historically emphasized: student opportunity, education choice, institutional accountability, and improved education outcomes.

• Provides a positive, future-facing platform that brings together youth, parents, schools, businesses, philanthropies, and civic leaders.

• Allows her to help shape a program that could become a model for foundations seeking measurable education impact.

• Gives her an opportunity to guide a board-level education strategy connected to real projects, workforce needs, and philanthropic investment.

• Creates a venue where her experience can influence practical improvements rather than remaining limited to political or policy discussions.

Education System Improvement Themes She May Align With

• Increasing student choice and individualized learning pathways.

• Connecting education to employability, entrepreneurship, and future economic realities.

• Improving accountability for publicly funded institutions.

• Expanding mentorship and project-based learning.

• Giving students earlier exposure to career paths before college decisions.

• Reducing wasted education spending by helping students make better-informed choices.

• Strengthening parental, student, and constituent voice in public education priorities.

• Encouraging alternative and supplemental learning models alongside traditional schools.

• Creating measurable outcomes tied to skill development, leadership, business creation, and civic contribution.

• Supporting students who are talented but may not thrive in conventional classroom-only environments.

Civic Leadership & iVote Alignment

• Connect her participation to We the People iVote.org as a civil leadership platform focused on public accountability.

• Present the iVote 4th Check & Balance as a constituent-involvement framework for organizations receiving public funds.

• Emphasize that universities, cities, economic development agencies, and publicly funded organizations should have clearer constituent feedback loops.

• Position this as a nonpartisan civic improvement concept: better transparency, better priorities, better outcomes.

• Connect civic leadership to youth development by teaching students how budgets, public institutions, policies, and leadership decisions affect their futures.

• Create a youth leadership model that helps students understand not only science and business, but also governance, accountability, and public responsibility.

Philanthropy & Foundation Alignment

• Frame the initiative as Innovation & Philanthropic Alignment.

• Use the phrase: “Innovation is philanthropy when it creates opportunity, employment, leadership, solutions, and wealth-building pathways.”

• Connect the initiative to historical examples such as W.K. Kellogg and Henry Ford, who created lasting civic value through business, innovation, education, and philanthropy.

• Present the 99,000+ foundations in existence as a major opportunity for coordinated national impact.

• Show that foundations need more than isolated grants; they need scalable platforms that create repeatable success paths.

• Position the Design Team Collaboration as a place where philanthropic dollars can generate measurable youth development, business formation, workforce training, and community benefit.

• Develop foundation-facing metrics: students mentored, projects completed, patents filed, startups launched, internships created, jobs created, scholarships supported, and communities served.

Board Role Possibilities for Betsy

• Chair or co-chair an Education Strategy Advisory Council.

• Help design the 9th-grade-through-college mentorship framework.

• Advise on education partnerships with schools, universities, foundations, and civic organizations.

• Support national messaging around education modernization and youth opportunity.

• Help attract philanthropic and education-focused partners.

• Guide accountability metrics for youth outcomes and institutional performance.

• Participate in leadership forums with students, parents, educators, business leaders, and foundation representatives.

• Help position the initiative as a serious national model rather than a local program.

Strong Executive Talking Points

• “This is not another education program; it is a youth-to-leadership operating system.”

• “Students need to see the future before they are asked to finance it.”

• “AI disruption requires earlier mentorship, stronger applied learning, and real project exposure.”

• “The Design Team Collaboration gives students a reason to pursue higher education because it connects education to purpose, ownership, and measurable contribution.”

• “The Midlink International Collaboration Center can become a healing palm for the nations by building international friendships through disciplined youth collaboration.”

• “The next five to ten years will determine whether students inherit uncertainty or help build the future.”

• “Foundations should not merely fund activity; they should plant foundations that grow into youth success, employment, leadership, and innovation.”

• “This initiative gives education reform a practical, visible, measurable platform.”

• “Betsy DeVos’s participation could help connect education improvement, philanthropic capital, civic accountability, and youth opportunity at the exact moment history requires it.”

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