About Ace It Forward
Andy Vitello is a sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill studying Business Administration with minors in Entrepreneurship and Advertising & Public Relations. He's played tennis since age four, competing in USTA/UTR tournaments and on his high school's Varsity team for five years, where he served as co-captain.
On the business side, Andy founded his first company in middle school, selling personalized gifts online and at craft shows, and later launched two more Etsy shops. In high school, he founded and led his school's DECA chapter and has since held multiple marketing and consulting internships. At UNC, he's an Engagement Manager for Consult Your Community, treasurer of the Entrepreneurship Club at Carolina, player and treasurer of the UNC Competitive Pickleball Team, and an upcoming teaching assistant for ECON 125: Introduction to Entrepreneurship.
Meet the Founder
How We Started
In the summer of 2025, Andy coached at a tennis camp run by the Raleigh Tennis Association and the Raleigh Police Department. The camp ran tennis in the morning and a rotation of afternoon activities, ranging from yoga to art classes. As part of that rotation, Andy launched an entrepreneurship workshop.
Each morning, the kids, aged 10-14, were asked to mentally note points of friction while playing tennis. Each afternoon, they wrote those problems down, from balls rolling under the fence to forgetting the score. Over the course of the week, the workshop walked them through the same design process real entrepreneurs use, one hour a day, until each group built a prototype and gave a Shark Tank-style pitch for their solution. A few of those solutions were later implemented at the following week's camp.
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What We’ve Grown Into
This summer, the initiative grew to include two new topics alongside entrepreneurship: personal branding and financial literacy. After tennis each morning, kids took part in interactive afternoon sessions built around these subjects.
In one week, they developed their own personal brand, learned why character matters, and practiced a 30-second elevator pitch, preparing them for job interviews and other opportunities down the road. In a two-day workshop, they learned the basics of budgeting, saving, and the difference between wants and needs, along with why trust and responsibility matter when it comes to money.
We're continuing to run this initiative at tennis camps with the help of our partner organizations. Later this year, we'll teach more sessions with the Center for Homeownership & Economic Development, and we're actively looking to grow our list of partners.
Who This is For
Ace It Forward is built for kids and teenagers ages 8-14. No tennis experience is required, and many of the kids who go through our program have never played before. Our camps typically run tennis in the morning, followed by our workshops in the afternoon.
Ace It Forward isn't a standalone program. We currently operate through partner tennis camps and community organizations, and thanks to their support through donors and grants, every camp is free for participants.
Registration for our upcoming partnership programs is currently closed. We'll update this page as new spots open with our partner camps. Sign up for updates on openings for your kid.
If you run a camp or program interested in bringing this curriculum to your participants, visit our Partner With Us page.
A Note From Andy: Why This Matters
I started my first business in middle school while also playing competitive tennis, and for a long time, I thought of those as two separate parts of my life. It wasn't until after much reflection (thank you, college applications) that I realized how much they actually overlapped.
Seriously, though, it taught me a lot more than hitting a ball over a net. Most notably, tennis taught me how to fail.
Let’s start with a stat. Did you know that Serena Williams won 84% of her matches throughout her career, but only 55% of the total points she played?
In other words, no matter how hard I trained, I was going to lose about every other point at a minimum. Ouch. I got quite accustomed to failing, and it didn’t stop on the court.
As a naive 12-year-old business owner, I wasted money on fancy packaging, placed my products in stores that didn’t make sense, and mismanaged my time. Although I fell short in many aspects of my business, I knew how to navigate those mistakes and not repeat them — tennis taught me how to fail in a low-stakes environment, prepping me for the real world.
In short: I got used to failing frequently, how to learn from those failures, and how to move past them.
I think that’s the best lesson for any developing mind. After realizing the impact tennis had on me, I knew it could help so many others.
When I began coaching tennis, I noticed that most kids were learning the discipline, resilience, and failure that come with the sport, but nobody showed them how to apply those qualities off the court. That gap is exactly why I started teaching entrepreneurship, personal branding, and financial literacy through tennis, rather than treating them as separate subjects in separate programs.
I think these lessons matter earlier than most people assume. Kids at this age can already understand basic financial decisions, think through a business idea, or practice presenting themselves with confidence. There just aren't many places that let them apply that in a hands-on way.
In our workshops, kids are encouraged to fail and learn from it, the same way any entrepreneur has to. There's no grade attached to any of it, so failing here has no impact on their college acceptance (*phew*... no need to stress, parents).
In a world where competition shows up everywhere, from college applications to the job market, I think giving kids a head start in entrepreneurship, personal branding, and financial literacy is the most useful thing I can offer them.
More than anything, I want kids to walk away from Ace It Forward believing they're capable of building something, whether that's a business or just the confidence to speak up for themselves. They're going to lose plenty of points along the way, but I want them to know that's exactly how you get better.
