“It’s an Age of Exploring”: Michelle Shan-Jeschelnig, WG’02, on Supporting Young People Through the Wharton Global Youth Program

For Alumni Executive Board member Michelle Shan-Jeschelnig, WG’02, the opportunity to explore her passions paved the way for a truly fulfilling career. “I was educated as an engineer,” says Shan-Jeschelnig, “but after I studied finance and business at Wharton, I felt like I finally found my true north. Now work doesn’t feel like work.”

Her only wish: that she had discovered her “true north” earlier — as a high school student. It’s no surprise, then, that Shan-Jeschelnig and her husband Richard Jeschelnig have chosen to make a leadership gift to the Wharton Global Youth Program, a robust initiative designed to immerse pre-collegiate students in everything Wharton has to offer.

The Wharton Global Youth Program provides high school students with access to a number of inspiring educational opportunities, including online and on-campus programs, as well as location-based programs in San Francisco and the U.K. According to Senior Executive Director Eli Lesser, these in-person and virtual experiences will enable Global Youth to “engage about 3,000 students directly” this summer.

Global Youth also runs the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition, in which teams of four to six high school students compete, free of charge, against peers from all over the world. As Lesser notes, the Investment Competition has “been growing by leaps and bounds” since its inception 11 years ago, with the 2024–2025 edition engaging more than 27,000 students in 65 countries. (Registration for the 2025–2026 competition will remain open through September 12.)

“When you’re a high school student,” says Shan-Jeschelnig, “it’s an age of exploring, it’s an age of discovering. And it’s important to empower young people — to help them detect their passions and meet people from other cultures. That’s why we’ve chosen to support the Wharton Global Youth Program.”

Jeschelnig and Shan-Jeschelnig have also made a generous gift to name the Shan-Jeschelnig Family Venture Pod in Tangen Hall, the home of Venture Lab. Through Venture Lab — the hub for innovation at Penn — budding entrepreneurs from across the University can access the resources, mentorship, and physical space they need to develop their business ideas and successfully build their ventures.

“It’s very daunting to start a business, even if you have a great idea,” notes Shan-Jeschelnig. “But Venture Lab is just a perfect platform of incubation. They help you from product design, manufacturing, sourcing, costing, marketing, financing to a business plan. This should be the Wharton way of supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs.”