Southwest Florida · Industry 4.0
STEMCAT trains Southwest Florida’s next welders, aviation technicians, semiconductor operators and healthcare techs — tuition-free. Your investment does not buy a program. It builds the workforce infrastructure this region runs on.
Tuition-Free · 501(c)(3) · EIN 47-3761436
Employers across Lee County cannot fill skilled technical roles. Meanwhile students two miles from those job sites finish high school with no pathway into them. STEMCAT closes that distance.
This is not a pilot asking for a chance. STEMCAT has been running the pipeline in Southwest Florida, and the students coming out of it are working in the fields they trained for.
Figures are a snapshot in time. Program-year totals as of August 2026, updated at the close of each session.
Every level below is a real unit of capacity. Our cost figures are benchmarked against the average price of comparable technical programs in Lee County.
Covers certification testing and a full term of shop materials for one student.
Invest →Funds one student’s complete year of skills training, start to credential.
Invest →Carries one student across multiple stages, or three students through a full training year.
Invest →Underwrites seventeen students through a complete training year, with named recognition in the Fieldhouse campaign.
Invest →That is one student’s full training year, spread across twelve months. Monthly investors give us something a one-time gift cannot: the ability to plan a cohort before the money arrives. Choose Monthly when you select your amount.
These are the jobs Southwest Florida cannot fill. These are the students who could fill them.
Trade imagery shown for illustration. Student photography is our own.
A student can enter at any stage. Nobody is behind.
Grades 3–8 see what is possible before anyone asks them to choose.
Junior CEO and Latimer Fellows put real projects in their hands.
Pre-apprenticeship on the same equipment employers run.
Registered apprenticeship and a paycheck that changes a family.
By the time most programs reach a student, they have already decided what they are not good at. We get there first.
Hands-on exposure across every STEMCAT discipline, plus community events and Fieldhouse open houses. No commitment, no pressure — just a young person finding out what grabs them.
Students build something of their own before they ever pick a trade — pricing it, pitching it, running the numbers, owning the outcome. Ownership first, then skills.
For students ready to go deeper: advanced project work, mentorship from working professionals, a summer boot camp, and a direct line into pre-apprenticeship.
Lewis Latimer was the son of people who escaped slavery. He taught himself mechanical drawing, drafted the patent for the telephone, and invented the carbon filament process that made the electric light practical and affordable enough to reach ordinary homes.
Edison is the name people remember. Latimer is the one who made it work.
Our Fellows carry his name because the pattern has not changed: the talent was always there, and the credit and the access were not. Funding a Fellow is how that gets corrected, one student at a time.
Enter an amount to see what it funds. Figures are based on the average cost of comparable technical training in Lee County.
Based on an estimated average cost of $2,857 to fund one Skilled Mind's full pathway completion, including training, materials, and support.
I have watched too many young people in Southwest Florida get told to wait — wait until high school, wait until they are older, wait until someone decides they are ready. Meanwhile the jobs that could change their family’s trajectory go unfilled a few miles away.
We start at eight, not eighteen. We stay until there is a paycheck. And we do not charge a family a dollar, because the moment cost enters the conversation, the students who need this most are the first ones out.
That model only works if someone funds it. That is the ask.
Jesse Bryson
Dr. Jesse Bryson · Founder & CEO, STEMCAT
Every gift is tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Questions about a major gift, a multi-year commitment, or naming opportunities in the Fieldhouse campaign?
Call (239) 666-8171 or email contact@stemcat.org and speak with Dr. Bryson directly.
STEMCAT is a registered DBA of I Will Mentorship Foundation, a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN 47-3761436).
3903 Dr Martin Luther King Jr Blvd #2, Fort Myers, Florida 33916
STEMCAT is built through partnerships with organizations, businesses, and community leaders investing in the future workforce of Southwest Florida.
These are not just supporters—they are builders of opportunity, believers in Skilled Minds, and partners helping create the experiences, exposure, and workforce pathways shaping what comes next.
