Owner Michael Wilson shares how GenTech develops students and how the students help develop GenTech to be the tech support for the community.

“GenTech does a lot of really cool and innovative things for the community and doing that through the lens of technology,” says Michael Wilson, an owner of the company. But providing walk-in tech support to the community is, in many ways, a supplemental benefit. “We go into schools and we teach STEM and CTE programs for K–12 schools across the Valley — really preparing kids for a future in technology by providing schools with an innovative but also sustainable model to have a STEM program, so where we bring in all of the equipment, we bring in the curriculum that we’ve developed, and also the instructor.”

GenTech has three main areas of focus: a community tech hub for providing tech support, an education arm that delivers STEM and computer science programs to K–12 schools — complete with instructors who, themselves students working toward a university degree, gain applicable experience in their field — and a foundation to fund these educational initiatives. It was the brainchild of Debbie Kovesdy, who developed it as a technology teacher in the Paradise Valley School District, sharing her passion for education and technology with her students. “They had the idea of, actually, our storefront — of the kids, the students, who have the technical ability,” Wilson relates. “They were, actually, ambassadors on their campus to help the other teachers around the campus with their tech problems.”

More than ambassadors, actually, as Michael explains in relating GenTech’s origins: “They took the idea and entered a SkillsUSA competition, and they won nationals in the entrepreneurship category with the idea. And when they came back, Debbie had written a grant to Cisco, and that was the seed money for getting GenTech actually started.”

He credits Debbie with maintaining transparency throughout the development process – involving the students from the business plan to the real estate space to the continuing feedback. And beyond GenTech to employment. The company’s mission is empowering students and preparing them for technology careers, and Michael also highlights the impact of programs like the computer-build class, where students get to take home refurbished desktops. “The whole concept of GenTech is really for the people that work here, and developing them and growing them so when they go off, after they get their experience here, they’re ready for that future workforce.”

Funding, of course, is a perpetual challenge for schools, and Michael relates how GenTech addressed that: “We’re problem solvers,” he notes, “so we decided to start a foundation to partner with corporations and local donors to raise money to give scholarships to schools, to have the funds for STEM programs.”

As Michael talks about “the kids that we’re able to teach … and the schools that we’re serving and the customers that come in,” he shares that GenTech is experiencing rapid growth and is looking to expand its innovative educational programs to reach more students across Arizona — collaborating with local companies and schools.

Michael’s belief in Gen Tech’s potential is manifest throughout the interview. “Going above and beyond to take care of people is the big differentiating factor. And people want to be around that. We want to bring those kinds of people around us and keep doing this good work that we’re doing.” Click on the link below to hear more about it.