We All Need Help to Realize What We Want Most.
What learners will do:
Move beyond the classroom into structured, real-world work environments alongside industry professionals. Build a portfolio of deliverables work you actually made for actual audiences that demonstrates your capability to any employer or school.
Where it can take Alumni:
Every industry we work in. Apprenticeship alumni have gone on to careers in media, technology, health, civic leadership, and beyond. The skill is not the specific industry it is the demonstrated ability to show up, produce, and grow.
CDMA Business Model Academy Creative Innovation Hub
Connect With the CDMA Business Model Creative Innovation Hub to Empower the NExt Generation
01.
Community-Based Leadership
Our team is rooted in community, service, and student-centered impact. We bring CDMA Business Model Academy programs directly into schools, neighborhoods, and public spaces so young people can access creative, technical, and business-building opportunities where they are.tor fames ut tempus feugiat mi quisque eget vitae.
02.
Creative Media Pathways
Through the CDMA Business Model Academy Creative Innovation Hub, our team helps students explore media production, storytelling, music, digital content, branding, and creative entrepreneurship. The Hub connects student creativity to real-world skills, professional standards, and future career pathways.
03.
Workforce & Partnership Development
Our leadership team builds relationships with schools, community partners, industry professionals, and workforce-aligned organizations. These partnerships help students move from exposure to experience through mentorship, events, projects, and career-connected learning.
04.
Student Success & Youth Voice
CDMA Business Model Academy’s team supports students as creators, leaders, and community advocates. From youth traffic safety initiatives to creative media activations, we help scholars build confidence, use their voice, and see themselves as part of the next generation of creative and business leaders.
Alumni Spotlight Washington, DC-Career Ready Middle School Experience to Pre-Med 10 Years Later
OVER A DECADE OF EVIDENCED BASED CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON DC
This is what a decade of real-world learning produces.
The CDMA Business Model Academy does not measure success by certificates issued or hours logged. It measures success by what happens to young people after they leave what they build, where they go, and who they become.
The alumni network is the proof. Not a brochure. Not a projection. Real people, real outcomes, real lives changed by real experience.
Miajah came to the CDMA Business Model Academy as a middle school student in Washington, DC. During her time in the program she became a published author and earned 3rd place in the DC Water book contest — demonstrating a voice and perspective that far exceeded her age.
Today, Miajah is a pre-med major preparing for service abroad in Africa.
“Proof. Leadership. Legacy.”
Her journey is not exceptional because it is rare. It is exceptional because it is documented — and because it is one of many. Over a decade of middle school programming in Washington, DC has produced a generation of young people whose trajectories changed because they were trusted with real work early.
Advisory Board
Strategic Growth & Operations
Rachel Pisani brings strategic marketing, fractional operations, nonprofit leadership, and growth planning into CDMA’s entrepreneurship ecosystem. She helps scholars understand branding, business structure, market positioning, and the operational systems needed to turn creative ideas into sustainable ventures.
Creative Technology & Global Rhythms
DJ Jen Jen brings music, culture, technology, and entrepreneurship together through her work as a DJ, producer, songwriter, and founder of the Jenergy Universe. Through her leadership in creative technology and JenergyAI, she helps CDMA scholars see how music, AI, STEM, branding, and business can become powerful career pathways.
TV Strategy & Technical Production
Tsadiqwah Scarville brings Emmy-nominated production experience and national broadcast insight into CDMA’s creative and technical pathways. She helps scholars understand the discipline, storytelling, and technical standards required to produce professional-quality media for film, television, streaming, and digital platforms.
Wellness & Institutional Safety
Dr. Leven “Chuck” Wilson brings expertise in wellness, mental health, nonprofit leadership, education, and institutional safety to CDMA’s student support model. He helps scholars build resilience, ethical leadership, emotional strength, and the personal discipline needed to succeed in school, business, and life.
Healthcare Innovation & Public Advocacy
MSN, RN-BC, CDCES
Michella Savoy-Carter brings healthcare leadership, Veteran care experience, and public advocacy into CDMA’s service-driven career pathways. She helps scholars understand the importance of professionalism, compassion, compliance, and workforce readiness in healthcare and community-centered industries.
Financial Strategy, High-Stakes Decision Advisory & Professional Standards
Michael Aponte brings a powerful blend of financial strategy, high-stakes decision-making, public-safety experience, authorship, and creative industry insight to the Academy. He helps CDMA scholars understand budgeting, risk assessment, ethics, crisis awareness, and the financial discipline needed to build responsible and sustainable ventures.
Catrina Brown
Instructional Literacy & ELA Standards
Catrina Brown brings more than 22 years of instructional leadership in English Language Arts, Social Sciences, literacy development, and student engagement. She helps CDMA scholars strengthen the reading, writing, communication, and critical-thinking skills needed to present ideas clearly and succeed across every career pathway.
Patrick Barnes
Musical Excellence & Legacy Mentorship
Patrick Barnes brings deep musical experience as a musician, composer, creative director, and founder of Devoted Music LLC. He helps CDMA scholars understand both the artistic discipline and business knowledge needed to build sustainable careers in music and performance.
Animation Series Inspired about our 100-Year Legacy
As featured across social media, this new series invites audiences into a story that began nearly a century ago a story rooted in a Harlem Renaissance–era business that offered dignity, training, and opportunity at a time when the world was changing and options were scarce. Preserved today in the The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem Legacy Catalog, this legacy lives on through the photographs of Winifred Hall Allen and the memory of a family that carried discipline, creativity, and service across generations. These short films trace the arc from 1920’s Harlem to the present day, honoring a lineage of entrepreneurs and community builders who transformed art into advocacy and survival into structure. As viewers follow each chapter A Time of Art, Struggle, and New Beginnings; The Legacy Begins; America on the Edge; and Empowering a Generation they witness how that early employment agency became the spiritual blueprint for what is now the CDMA Business Model® Evidence-Based CTE Ecosystem™. This is where legacy meets innovation, where the past informs the future, and where a 100-year tradition of empowerment continues to uplift youth, spark creativity, and shape leaders from Harlem to Washington, DC, and beyond.
To journey deeper into this living legacy, we invite you to subscribe to our YouTube channel, where each episode expands the story behind the CDMA Business Model® and the 100-year lineage that shaped it. New chapters reveal unseen archival moments, modern-day student experiences, and the powerful link between Harlem’s early innovators and the young creators rising today. By subscribing, you become part of a growing community committed to purpose-driven creativity, educational equity, and the belief that our history can light the path forward. Join us, stay connected, and continue exploring the movement that began in the 1920’s and still inspires generations to dream, build, and lead.