John Zitzner

 

President of Friends of Breakthrough Schools

 

by Shamara Harris, crew 3

 

 

There’s a man out there who is in the business of being a president. His name is John Zitzner. Zitzner was president of his own software company from 1983 to 1998. However, he was deemed “president” much earlier. As a child, Zitzner’s father took him to a business luncheon, where he introduced John as a president, “I’d like everyone to meet the next president of IBM.” His response was, “If my dad thinks I could be the president of IBM, maybe I could be the president of something.” Currently, he is the local president of Friends of Breakthrough Schools.

 

Mr. Zitzner became an entrepreneur when he was 28; he is now 59. He started because at his old job, he wasn't treated fairly. He asked for a raise and he couldn't get one, so he decided to start his own business. Zitzner thought to himself, ‘I’m going to start a company where exceptions can be made.’ After developing his business plan for a full year, Zitzner left his job and started his own business, a software company called Bradley Company. His former boss was the first person to invest in his business. Eventually Zitzner sold it to a larger company, Xerox.

 

Zitzner was inspired to get involved in education by Steve Mariotti, an entrepreneur who was beat up by kids in New York City for just $10. Mariotti responded by becoming a teacher. Zitzner recalled thinking, ‘If I didn’t have this software company, I want to do what he’s doing.’  He also explained that he had never stepped foot in an urban school until he was 45. “I was just a sheltered guy,” Zitzner revealed. In 2001, he started a program called E CITY and went into Cleveland high schools to teach about entrepreneurship, and he saw that many students didn’t know how to do basic math, so he wanted to help them learn. “We’re telling these kids they can graduate from high school, but they’re going to fail in life,” Zitzner explained.

 

Zitzner responded by meeting with the CEO of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to talk about the future of those children and his dream of opening his own school. Zitzner started Entrepreneurship Preparatory charter school in 2006, then Village Prep, an elementary school, in 2008. In 2010, Zitzner was a leader in the creation of the Breakthrough Schools network. This is a group of nine high-performing charter schools in Cleveland. Breakthrough Schools hopes to have 20 schools by 2020, but Zitzner will still be a long way from retirement because he said he doesn’t want to retire until he is 82.

 

Now, Zitzner is the president of Friends of Breakthrough Schools, which is the fundraising branch of the organization. The best part of Zitzner’s job is that when “people from the community come into our schools and say, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so amazing. Your kids are amazing, your teachers are amazing.’ They don’t think its possible,” he explained. Zitzner also said the worst part of his job is going to meetings because they are so long and very tiring. Zitzner said he used to think he had to be the smartest, but he would tell his younger self, “Hey, wait a minute, find people to hang out with that know more than you do. You might think you need to be the smart one, but it’s actually the opposite.” Zitzner put that advice into practice in his current role at Friends of Breakthrough by hiring only people who are even more knowledgeable than he is. “Successful people surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are and who know more than they do,” he said. “You can be much more successful if everyone around you knows more than you do.”