LQD Business Finance announced the LQD Power Up Program, an internal program devoted to creating new opportunities through internships and mentoring to underprivileged young adults in the Chicagoland area.

George Souri, the company's CEO, made the announcementamd explained its genesis: “I was listening to Merck CEO Ken Frazier on CNBC this week. As an African American CEO of one of America's most prominent companies, Ken’s views on the current state of unrest, issues of opportunity inequality, and the role of companies in addressing some of these issues are particularly salient.

At LQD, we have always championed the cause of personal empowerment, of ongoing growth and improvement, and of training. Our driving motivation is to do things better by thinking things through, being committed to excellence, and having the desire and willingness to take on the hard challenges and do the work even when it’s not easy. I think that this ethos has a place in the larger social discourse of the moment. Government – whether due to lack of will or competence – cannot fix any of this.

The LQD Power Up Program will create internships for underprivileged young adults who demonstrate intellectual curiosity, the desire to work hard, and ownership of responsibility for their future. LQD will invest the time and money to train these interns with skills that will serve them in any career path they take and in the various business functions, including marketing, finance, and operations.

At LQD we champion the entrepreneurial spirit. This spirit is not merely about owning a business. As any entrepreneur knows, this spirit is, at its core, about taking ownership of one's fate and working hard at personal risk and sacrifice towards a better future. It is about seeing the role of individual agency and developing the courage to step into that role and make a difference in personal and social outcomes.

Let us entrepreneurs and business leaders not sit by while the government continues in its decades-long progress of making a mess of things. And let us not applaud the easily dispatched platitudes of PR statements from corporate executives who put no skin in the game and fail to also deploy resources to create opportunities. Words are cheap because they are easy.

At LQD we believe in empowerment and action and the LQD Power Up Program is just a natural extension of that ethos. I am also calling on other business leaders to join us in this effort to create opportunity and teach the entrepreneurial attitude so that we may give more people the skills, confidence, and opportunity to take ownership of their future notwithstanding the very real social and economic challenges they face and which we face as a nation.”