“I believe in humanity.”
When Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end Arik Armstead accepted the 2025 NFL Man of the Year Award, these were the words with which he closed his acceptance speech.
Armstead has taken the belief — that every human being is capable of remarkable things — and applied it to his Stay Hungry Career Camps. The camps, which launched in Armstead’s hometown of Sacramento, give local youth the opportunity to engage with employers and to hear about the broad array of jobs these firms offer. Armstead’s nonprofit, the Armstead Academic Project (AAP), runs the camps. In an interview with the Charles Koch Foundation, which has partnered with AAP to expand the camps around the country, Armstead said the camps were a natural outgrowth of the foundation’s work in elementary, middle, and high schools.
“I was having a lot of conversations with students about their hopes and aspirations, and it seemed like their full potential was not being realized,” Armstead said. “When you looked at what they had access to in the different jobs and careers they knew of, and that they thought were possible for themselves, it was really limited to only what they saw in their neighborhoods. We felt like if they were exposed to more opportunities, they could connect it to their learning and be more motivated in school.”
In a 2023 interview with ABC 7 News in San Francisco, Armstead’s wife, Mindy, who co-founded the nonprofit and is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, said the camps aim to “make [students’] education make sense” — to demonstrate how young people will eventually apply writing or math skills in the real world. “[T]hat in itself will increase their economic mobility,” Mindy Armstead said. “You don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t imagine a job if you’ve never been there in person.”
And it is not just students who benefit — employers have embraced the Armsteads’ mission, too.
Connecting students’ passions with employer needs
Like the Armsteads, the Shoe Palace is an American success story. Founded as a small, family-owned business in San Jose in 1993, the company now operates more than 200 stores across the country, along with a thriving e-commerce site.
The company is representative of the type of businesses Armstead wants to partner with for his career camps. Community-focused — the company says it thrives because it believes “amazing service, above all else, is the most important reason why any business succeeds” — Shoe Palace offers a wide array of jobs that camp participants can explore.
“We are looking for well-rounded companies that offer a lot of different jobs that could pique a student’s interest,” Armstead explained. “Whether it’s marketing, shipping and processing, or retail, we want to expose kids to all different elements that make a company successful so they can see how they would fit.”
As part of the November 2023 camp AAP hosted with Shoe Palace, students toured a company warehouse and met with members of the design department. Marcello Morerra, a high school junior and aspiring photographer, talked with the company’s media team and discovered they need photographers to shoot the shoes that appear on the company’s online retail site.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” Morerra told ABC 7 News.
Armstead said the employers with whom AAP has worked are as excited about the camps as the students. “The employers have so much fun doing the career camps,” Armstead said. “I think it’s because they see themselves in these in these young people and they see how fortunate they were to have a mentor or someone who exposed them to opportunity.”
Jason Dooley, a member of the Shoe Palace team that helped facilitate the camp, agreed. “It’s important to me and to ownership because we were those kids, you know — we were into sneakers, we were trying to find outlets to our creativity,” Dooley told ABC 7 News.
The mutual benefit opening students’ minds to all careers
For employers, attracting and retaining and motivated workforce is a perennial pain point. And with fewer than one-third of U.S. employees saying they are engaged at work, this worry is unlikely to go away even if unemployment rates rise and finding bodies to fill jobs gets easier.
“It’s just good business to develop the next line of employees and develop your workforce for your company, especially locally,” Armstead said.
Building a more engaged workforce starts with helping young people discover their aptitudes and their interests. This exposure allows future job seekers to find work that excites them and to understand the path that will lead them to that job.
Food manufacturer Torani participated in a Stay Hungry Career Camp in April 2024. CEO Melanie Dulbecco highlighted how both students and employers benefit from the camps. “For 99 years, Torani has been a people-first company that believes businesses can and should create opportunities for people to really ‘make it’ — both economically, and through learning and development,” Dulbecco said. “AAPs’ Career Camp is committed to the same important things: it offers young people valuable exposure and connections that can equip them to thrive on their paths.”
The April 2024 camp was so successful, Torani signed up for another. AAP hosted a second event with Torani in January 2025.
“We have these amazing students here today who are getting exposure to all different kinds of opportunities,” Dulbecco explained while attending the second camp. “And our team is getting exposure to youth who are curious and interested. It’s a great experience for all of us.”
For Armstead, watching joy erupt on students’ faces when they discover a career path that they could love is a little like gliding past a block to rush and sack a quarterback. “Just to see what these kids gravitate toward is really amazing,” Armstead said.
The camps do more than unlock career ideas, too. At the first Torani camp, one student became fascinated with the warehousing aspect of the company. That student now works for Torani.
“That’s the goal,” Armstead said. “Helping these students find their path — and believe in what’s possible.”
