Bosh
Last week, NBA Hall of Famer and former power forward for the Miami Heat Chris Bosh addressed the South Florida community about the role technology and entrepreneurship have played in his life.
In a talk hosted by Broward College at their Bailey Hall auditorium, Chris Bosh reiterated the message to dream big and don’t give up. He told attendees that they should not let preconceptions deter them from pursuing ambitious goals.
Bosh was exposed to coding at a young age thanks to his tech-savvy parents. As a child, he said that he “began to notice that the world around me was spinning on an axis powered by varying patterns of 1s and 0s.”
“We’d be fools to ignore the power of mastering the designing and coding of those patterns,” he said in an op-ed for Wired. “If brute physical strength ran one era, and automation the next, this is the only way we can keep up. Most jobs of the future will be awarded to the ones who know how to code.”
Bosh also shared some insights from his 2021 book, Letters to a Young Athlete, in which he compiled lessons he learned from his years in the NBA and beyond. His basketball career was cut short due to an unexpected health condition. His career, which at the time was at its peak, ended “in a doctor’s office in the middle of the afternoon,” said Bosh. But now seven years into his post-NBA career, Bosh is keeping himself busy with entrepreneurship.
The portion of the event that was open to the public consisted of a 30-minute talk moderated by Carlos Parra, Broward College’s Senior Director of Student Engagement.
Bosh and Siddiqui
In the private fireside chat, Bosh shared his own entrepreneurial journey and the benefits of an entrepreneurial mindset on and off the court. In attendance were many early-stage tech founders from BCEx, the Broward College Entrepreneurial Experience, led by Imran Siddiqui, Associate Vice President of Employment Solutions and BCEx at Broward College and the Vice Chair of South Florida Tech Hub’s Startup Committee.
Siddiqui, who moderated the fireside chat with Bosh, highlighted a handful of simple but profound thoughts that Bosh shared. For instance, the idea that your friends should want you to succeed, and that young people should surround themselves with people that want them to succeed.
“I had our BCEx students stand up and identify themselves, and [Bosh] was very encouraging about their aspirations,” Siddiqui told South Florida Tech Hub. “He said, ‘I know it’s a long lonely road, but you need to decide how committed you are. And if this is your thing, and if you’re committed, you need to remember that and you need to stay true to it and stay true to yourself and and see it through.’”
Bosh also expressed his view that entrepreneurship is a character-building exercise that can help students build a skill set and resiliency that is necessary for a successful life. This works well with BCEx’s mission, Siddiqui noted, that aims to empower students through business and the cultivation of a lifelong entrepreneurial mindset.