Cassandra Bernard
2019–20 Award of Distinction · mentor and board member
Founder, Casico Creative
The flagship program of Connect-IT 360
Become the CEO of your life.
An immersive, project-based incubator where student teams build real solutions to real problems, guided by industry mentors and evaluated by real-world standards.
2,000+Students impacted
$175KIn scholarship & award funds committed
11Consecutive years running
Principal partners
Our mission
SharkMakers is building the next generation of leaders, innovators, and changemakers. Students don’t just learn about innovation, they step into the arena, working alongside industry experts to solve real-world problems, build real products and businesses, and discover what they are capable of creating.
We teach young people to believe in themselves, embrace the art of possibility, and lead with the confidence and courage to build a better world for all abilities.
What it actually is
Not a competition with a trophy. A season with a product at the end.
Students join a regional cohort and work an experiential process: find a problem worth solving, talk to real customers, design for people of all abilities, build the thing, work out the business around it, and pitch it live.
Along the way they get industry mentors, workshops, and the parts of the job that classrooms skip - customer discovery, product strategy, business development, marketing, pitch craft and fundraising.
Join the 2026–27 season
Four ways in.
High school
A Tampa Bay season. Registration opens October 15; join the interest list and we will tell you the day it does.
Collegiate – Next Gen
The inaugural cohort runs October 2 to December 8, with USF and Accenture. Applications for it are closed; tell us you want a place in the next one.
Mentor
Industry professionals from across Tampa Bay guide student teams from first idea to final pitch.
Sponsor a season
Fund the grants teams compete for, host a workshop, or put your own people in the room as mentors and judges.
Program materials
High school
The student journey
Five stages. Commitment, growth and execution, not perfection.
SharkMakers rewards commitment, growth, and execution, not perfection. We get messy.
Problem discovery & purpose
Teams identify a meaningful problem worth solving.
Product strategy & validation
Teams move from idea to intentional product design.
UI & UX architecture
Teams develop the tech architecture for their product.
Business model & fundraising
Teams learn how to create a viable venture and raise capital.
Pitch, polish & performance
Teams create a “Shark Tank ready” presentation and deck.
Eleven years
You are joining a program with a decade of receipts.
SharkMakers is the current name of a program that has run for eleven consecutive years. The name changed. The students kept shipping.
- 2026–27Next Gen
SharkMakers Next Gen takes the model to college.
- 2025SharkMakers
Next Gen Tech 360 becomes SharkMakers.
- 2024–25Accessibility at the core
Accessibility stops being a checklist and becomes the design brief.
- 2021–24NGT360 & regional growth
Next Gen Tech 360, and the model outgrows technology.
- 2020Full operations
Full operational responsibility, taken on in the worst possible year.
- 2018CI360 founded
Connect-IT 360 is founded to carry the program.
- 2015The gap
A technology competition that was teaching the wrong half of the job.
Empowering all abilities
Bridging the gap between accessibility and entrepreneurship.
Students design with accessibility at the core. From the first sketch they are asked who the product has to work for - not after it is built. It is a design discipline and a business argument at once.
The only youth program invited to the inaugural WAWABILITY event
Every ability
Every founder
Outcomes
Where SharkMakers alumni ended up.
Alex Kranias
2019–20 Award of Distinction · 2020–22 intern
Machine learning engineer at Apple
Marcin Plaza
2021–22 1st Place · 2022–23 2nd Place
Hardware engineer at Midjourney
The final pitch
Students pitch to people who actually write checks.
The season ends in a live pitch to industry judges - founders, operators and investors from across the Tampa Bay corridor, not a panel of teachers grading a rubric.
Support a student’s season.
SharkMakers is delivered by Connect-It 360, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 82-3756618). Every donation is processed by the nonprofit and funds scholarships, workshops and the mentor network.
