GREENFIELD — Greenfield Community College’s Business Club will head to one of the economic centers of the world next month to see first-hand how established companies operate as they work toward the credentials to start their own.
Business Department Co-chair Thom Simmons said the current club members will take their annual trip to New York City from April 13 to 16, where they’ll visit various businesses, including Squeaky Wheel Media, a social media marketing company that Simmons said has been recognized as the number one most socially responsible business in the city for work connecting cancer patients and cancer survivors through their social media expertise, for free.
They’ll also visit a chocolate factory, the NBC News studios, see “Something Rotten” on Broadway, and attend the Green Business Expo, and go to a New York Yankees baseball game over the course of four days.
Simmons is from New York, and said he’s still got a lot of contacts there.
“We visit different businesses each trip,” Simmons said. “We’ve been to Brooklyn Brewery, music recording studios, fashion design firms and an attorney who specializes in crowdsourcing.”
Simmons’s students Andrew Simmons of Shelburne and Mario Gonzalez of Northfield will be among those to journey to the Big Apple.
Andrew Simmons said he went on the previous trip, where he was able to visit a fashion design firm, the crowdsourcing lawyer and see “Chicago” on Broadway.
“It’s cool to talk to these companies about why they do they things they do the way they do them on the business side,” he said.
Gonzalez’s trip will be his first.
“I’ve never to New York before, but it’ll be interesting. I want to see the work that goes into what I’m going into,” he said.
Simmons said students who have gone on past trips have been known to sometimes be offered internships on the spot.
“Lots come back with a sense of how to get their own business up and running,” he said.
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