The Private School Built Around Entrepreneurship and Leadership

By David Yarbrough  ·  August 25, 2026

You have read the brochures. Every private school in South Orange County mentions leadership. Several list entrepreneurship. But when you visit, the day still looks the same: a teacher at the front, children at desks, a curriculum built around the next test. What you are actually searching for is a school where those words are not marketing language. Where they are the architecture.

That school exists. It is called Wonderstorm Academy, and it sits at 25332 McIntyre St in Laguna Hills.

What It Means When Leadership Is the Lens, Not the Club

Most schools treat leadership as a student council position or a character education unit that runs for six weeks in the spring. At Wonderstorm Academy, leadership is one of three core lenses through which every academic subject is taught. Reading, writing, mathematics, science, and history are all present and taught rigorously. But those five subjects are not the finish line. They are the raw material.

These three things. How they communicate, how they lead themselves, how they create value. Are what will actually determine the shape of their life. Every intelligent parent knows this. No school, other than Wonderstorm Academy, is built around it.

The three lenses are Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Powerful Communication. Every day of school at Wonderstorm is organized around developing one or more of those three capabilities through real academic work. A student does not learn history and then separately learn leadership. They study history by stepping into the roles of the most influential figures at the most critical turning points, making the decisions those figures made, defending those decisions in Socratic discussion, and living with the consequences of their reasoning.

That is not a field trip. That is how history is taught every week.

What Entrepreneurship Actually Looks Like Here

Last year, a 10-year-old in Laguna Hills stood in front of a live community audience and pitched a product she had built herself. She set the price. She handled the questions.

That moment did not happen because she was unusually gifted. It happened because her school spent months building the specific capabilities that moment required: identifying a problem worth solving, creating something of genuine value, understanding pricing and margin, and communicating with enough clarity and confidence to hold a room.

At Wonderstorm, the entrepreneurship curriculum is not a simulation. Students build real products, launch real businesses, write copy that actually needs to persuade, price their work against real costs, and learn to read the difference between a good idea and a viable one. Mathematics stops being abstract the moment a student watches a bad pricing decision eat their profit. History becomes personal the moment a student has to defend a strategic choice to a skeptical audience.

The school describes the governing principle this way: financial abundance is earned by making other people's lives measurably better. Students practice that principle year after year, not as a lesson but as a lived experience.

What Powerful Communication Builds Over 13 Years

Communication at Wonderstorm is not a presentation skills class offered to juniors. It begins at age five and deepens in complexity through 12th grade. The progression is deliberate: children start by learning to articulate their thinking clearly, then move toward persuasion, public speaking, Socratic debate, social calibration, and eventually the mechanics of influence and charisma.

One of the training formats is the Improv Battle Arena, which builds fluid intelligence, the ability to think under pressure, adaptability, and social courage through games that are genuinely challenging and genuinely fun. Students learn to relax when the stakes feel high, because they have practiced being in that position hundreds of times before it matters.

A child who grows up to be a powerful communicator. Who communicates intelligently, articulately, charismatically, and persuasively. Has a huge advantage over one who does not.

Parents who have watched this development describe it in specific terms. Jeff Janke, a Wonderstorm parent, wrote: "She carries herself with a light and a confidence we hadn't seen before, and it shows most in how she treats our family and friends. She is more present, more kind, more herself." That kind of change does not come from a communication unit. It comes from a school culture built around it from the first day.

The College Path Nobody Talks About

For parents who are thinking about college admissions, the Wonderstorm model offers something worth understanding carefully. There are two doors into the University of California system. The first is freshman entry, where your child competes with over 40,000 applicants. Students with top grades, exceptional test scores, and the most expensive private school educations in the country. For roughly a 9% acceptance rate, according to Wonderstorm Academy's own published figures. Then four full years of tuition.

The second door is the transfer path. Wonderstorm's college path allows a student to complete an associate degree and all transfer coursework by age 18, then apply as a transfer student through a pathway where, the school cites, roughly 1 in 4 applicants is admitted. Same university. Same diploma. The school estimates the savings at approximately $70,000 to $90,000 for the two years that are bypassed.

This is not a workaround. It is a designed pathway that rewards the kind of self-directed, academically serious student Wonderstorm builds over 13 years.

And for students who are not college-bound, the argument is even clearer. A young person who can walk into any room and connect with people effortlessly, who has already built multiple businesses before graduating, who does not wait to be told what to do next. That person has an advantage that no credential can manufacture and no standardized test can measure.

What Families in South Orange County Are Actually Finding

Wonderstorm serves families from across South Orange County, including Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Lake Forest, San Juan Capistrano, Dana Point, San Clemente, Laguna Beach, Newport Coast, Coto de Caza, Las Flores, Trabuco Canyon, Ladera Ranch, and Portola Hills. The campus in Laguna Hills is fully on-site and in-person, serving children ages 5 through 18 across a complete K–12 range. It is not a homeschool program. It is not a hybrid. It is a full-time school community.

Mike Lucus, a parent with three children enrolled, wrote: "We are genuinely grateful for Holly and her team. If you're a homeschool parent looking for a learning center or public/private school isn't working out for you I'd recommend touring Wonderstorm."

The enrollment process is consultative by design: a call first to determine fit, then a campus tour, then an application. That sequence reflects what kind of school this is. Wonderstorm is not trying to fill seats. It is building a community of families who share a specific conviction about what childhood and education should produce.

Founded in 2018 by Holly and Dave Yarbrough, the school has grown through the kind of word-of-mouth that only comes from parents who saw something change in their child that they were not expecting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the academic curriculum at Wonderstorm rigorous enough for college preparation? Yes. Reading, writing, mathematics, science, and history are all taught at full academic depth. The difference is that those subjects are organized around the three lenses of Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Powerful Communication, so academic mastery and real-world capability develop together rather than separately. The school's college transfer path is designed to give students a concrete academic pathway into the University of California system.

What ages does Wonderstorm serve, and is it a full-time school? Wonderstorm Academy is a fully on-site, in-person private school serving children ages 5 through 18, kindergarten through 12th grade, at 25332 McIntyre St in Laguna Hills, California. It is not a homeschool program, a hybrid program, or an online school. Children attend in person every school day.

How is entrepreneurship taught to younger children? Even for the youngest students, entrepreneurship is introduced as a way of thinking: noticing problems, imagining solutions, and creating something of value. As children move through the program, the complexity increases. By the middle and upper grades, students are building real products, operating small businesses, and presenting their work to real audiences. The foundation is laid early so that the advanced work later has something real to build on.

What is the enrollment process? Enrollment begins with a call to determine whether Wonderstorm is a strong fit for your family. From there, families are invited for a campus tour to see the environment and meet the guides. The application follows. The consultative process is intentional: the school is designed for families who share its values, and the enrollment conversation is where that alignment is established.

Does Wonderstorm work for children who are not struggling academically? Many Wonderstorm families come not because their child is falling behind, but because their child is capable and bored. A student who is technically keeping up but disengaged, waiting to be told what to do next, or frustrated by the gap between what they are capable of and what school is asking of them, is exactly the kind of student this model was designed for. The goal is not remediation. It is the full development of each child's individual potential.

The Version of Your Child at Nineteen

There is a version of your child at nineteen who walks into a room and owns it. Who has already built multiple businesses. Who does not wait to be told. And then there is a version who has excellent grades and is still waiting for permission or instruction from someone to know what to do. The difference is not your child's potential. It is what their life was built around over the last 13 years.

If you are a parent in South Orange County who has been searching for a school that actually teaches entrepreneurship and leadership. Not as a brochure line, not as an elective, but as the architecture of every school day. The next step is a conversation.

Schedule your campus tour at Wonderstorm Academy

David Yarbrough

Co-Founder

Dave Yarbrough is the founder of Wonderstorm Academy, a devoted husband and father of six, and a lifelong student of human potential. For more than 25 years, he has explored how education can help children flourish intellectually, socially, and personally. His vision is to create a new model of learning that expands what is possible for children and for education as a whole. Dave holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from UC Santa Barbara.

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