WBRG

WBRG is a pro bono literacy project of Collaborative Gain dedicated to educating high school students on business, finance, leadership, and ethics. We address the most important issue—student motivation to learn. And we do that by enlisting the single best business and finance teacher the world has ever seen: Warren Buffett. While he doesn’t personally come to class, his terrific writings and speeches are the foundation of this program. We have taken a selection of 40 years of shareholder letters and thousands of speeches and distilled them into a course we have tested with more than 500 students over 4 years. Initially conceived as a pandemic-era program, Phyl and the growing roster of fellow faculty discovered that WBRG met an ongoing need for high school students to receive an introduction to the world of business. In the spring of 2020, when the pandemic forced most schools to close and education was in crisis in the United States, HBS graduate, internet entrepreneur, and investor Phyl Terry launched WBRG for high school students who were receiving no quality education at the time. They discovered that the program had many unanticipated ancillary benefits. It led to an increased level of student motivation and self-direction when they returned to classes in the fall. WBRG helps students become better, more motivated learners. And as all educators know, self-motivation is the key to learning. If a student has their own desire to learn, they can go far.