IDEA Brownsville students: Ankjear Jensen is an inspiration to us

BROWNSVILLE, Texas – Two students in their junior year at IDEA Brownsville have thanked Greater Brownsville Incentives Corporation Chairman Ankjaer Jensen for encouraging them to pursue their dreams of going into business.

Steven Becker and Ioay Adada met Jensen, a retired merchant naval captain from Denmark, at GBIC’s 2025 Rally in the Valley. 

The event, held at the Brownsville Events Center, brought together over 400 high school students, industry leaders, and GBIC partners for a day of career exploration, networking, and hands-on experiences including an immersive AR/VR simulation station. Jensen gave the closing remarks. 

“We’re both in the 11th grade at IDEA Brownsville, and we want to start a business club to teach people in our school and even our community about good business practices,” Becker said. “We want to expand further our planned business club with GBIC’s help because we see so many people who are fascinated by business, and want to go to business, but they don’t have the opportunity to do business.”

Adada agreed. “I want to also teach people how to do finance because a lot of people don’t understand that, and that’s like the foundation of every other subject,” Adada said. “My mother, for instance, has a hard time with her finances. A lot of people have a hard time with their finances. If they were able to understand that more clearly, they would do so much better.”

Adada said IDEA Brownsville teaches Space and engineering, but not business.

“We have a microeconomics class at school, and it’s helpful, but I feel like there’s room for a business class. I asked, and they were like, we’ve never really had one. I mentioned it to my counselor. She was like, that’s a great idea. We want to have that. So next year they are planning to start it, and we want to reach out to our community, to the City of Brownsville because they might be able to help us finance it?”

Asked how much interest there is among their classmates for a business club, Adada said: “I think it is pretty large because people want to do business these days, they want to be entrepreneurs. They want to start their own business. Maybe they want to do stocks, investments.”

Both Becker and Adada said they like using an app that allows them to learn how to trade stocks. “It teaches you the different markets,” Becker said.

Asked how helpful it was to meet Jensen and pick his brains, Adada said: 

“Akjaer has been very helpful. He taught me what is what is needed for business, for entrepreneurship. He said that if you have perseverance and dedication and you add that to opportunity, you’ll get a certain chance of luck where you’ll be able to grow. He said that risks are game changers, that you have to take risks in order to get somewhere in life.”

Becker agreed. “Rally in the Valley has been very helpful, a great opportunity. We’ve found a lot of people that are into finance, and they really want to help. They like our idea of starting a business club. I particularly want to thank Ankjaer. He is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. He told us about his travels, his journey, but he also told us about taking risks. I want to do investment banking, potentially, in the future. And he told me about risk assessment and his business journey.”

Jensen said he was happy to sit and chat with the two IDEA students. 

“It is nice to see the youth and enthusiasm of these students. They want to do stuff. Talking to them, I saw myself, 60 years ago. I wanted to do so much with my life, and I have. I have lived my dream. I hope these two students do the same thing. As long as they have the endurance and they don’t give up and are willing to take some risk, they’ll do fantastic.”

Editor’s Note: GBIC’s Ankjaer Jensen has agreed to do a series of podcasts with the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service in order to keep the public abreast of the dynamic growth happening in Brownsville. Click here to watch the first in the series.

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