I spent the early years researching the topic. The goal was to teach them as I learned, and to stay one step ahead of my classes. I took them to see the experts at Key Bank and the Wright State University School of Business. As time went on, the experts came to us. The late Ellis Rowe (former VP, Mars, Inc.), and Theo Killion (former CEO, Zales) flew in from Jacksonville and Chicago respectively, just to share a few of their valuable hours for what they both found to be an invaluable experience. This book is written by a teacher, for teachers. Unlike other books of its kind, this one’s not written by an expert in the field of investment financing. Quite frankly, I saw in this project, such a sense of urgency, that the need for it to be delivered by experts (whenever they became available), was outweighed by the need for it to be delivered in the here and now. Our Stock Is Rising is a metaphor that speaks not just to the disenfranchised, but to all the little kids in all the neighborhoods outside New York’s famed Financial District. It says that we are not always too young. And that the things we are allowed to be challenged by in our youth, won’t be the things that deny us a place at the table, as adults.