WILMINGTON — When you love what you do for a living, it sometimes overlaps with your extracurriculars. Such is the case for Travis Corpening, who’s life objective involves uplifting others—students, in particular.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Corpening landed a position at Wilmington Health Access for Teens, and has been working with youth ever since.
Now, 16 years later, Corpening travels to different schools as a motivational speaker, hosts a local radio show once a week, and holds workshops and trainings for business owners.
But, two aspects of Corpening’s life truly intersect. He works full time as a program coordinator for a minority male mentoring initiative at Cape Fear Community College (CFCC), while his free time is dedicated to operating the Young Mogul nonprofit.
“I run a center called the Nixon Minority Male Leaders Center,” Corpening said. “So on a college scale, it’s essentially a part of what Young Mogul does.”
The center originally started off as an initiative to encourage minority males at CFCC to continue their education, and that is still the goal. However, Corpening says it is also a resource to any student who wants to visit.
Corpening and his assistant, Cedric Harrison, host tutoring sessions, university visits and “Movie and a Message” events, where they watch films and have a discussion afterwards. So far, they’ve watched “Wilmington Ten,” “13th” and “Wilmington on Fire.”
Young Mogul, Corpening’s nonprofit, focuses on introductory entrepreneurship through decision making for young men ages 13 through 18. This group has regular meetings where Corpening does exercises to help the teens build speaking etiquette, presentation skills and overall confidence.
He even had a workshop similar to the training athletes go through when they first get signed professionally. The Moguls each had to sit at a press conference table and answer questions with poise and eloquence. He also brought in the UNCW assistant athletic director to speak to the boys about the academics needed to become a college athlete.
“I felt like that would be really great to capsulate that and give it to young men, whether they’re interested in athletics or not,” Corpening said.
The television show, “Shark Tank,” is another inspiration behind one of Corpening’s exercises with the students.
He has the youths develop their own business idea and present it via PowerPoint. The slides must include the name and product, the problem the business is solving, how much it costs to start up, and what sets the business or product apart from every other one.
“I’ll invite some of my business owner or my entrepreneur friends and we’ll kind of critique,” he said. “We do an early one, and we tell them ‘this is what you need to fix’ and they’ll come back and do a final one.”
Corpening created Young Mogul with the purpose of giving teens exposure to certain experiences and life lessons that they wouldn’t typically be exposed to.
“I find that African-American males, a lot of times, don’t even realize there are gaps—things that they aren’t getting that they should be getting,” said the youth leader.
He is inspired by the idea that everyone can bring a level of valuable input into any conversation. Being aware that some young men don’t have the confidence to share their thoughts, Corpening wants to instill in his students that their input has worth and that they should never feel inferior because they are a minority.
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