Video: CVC Award Leon Fowler
Entrepreneurship is nothing new to Leon Fowler – but, when it came time to make the biggest pitch of his career, a team of PNC volunteers working with Skythelimit.org provided the strategic support that helped him stand out.
Fowler has been in business since age 12, when he bought a few snack vending machines, committed to restocking them regularly, and profited $100 or more a week.
Now Fowler owns XCLUSV, a communications platform that helps nonprofits and professional organizations bypass traditional channels like email and social media, delivering real-time push notifications to their audiences through a custom app. It’s a win-win – the organization gets a direct increase in active participation, and participants feel an increased sense of belonging.
It's a marketable idea, and the judges of a recent pitch competition, sponsored by CVC Capital, agreed. They selected Fowler for the 2025 CVC Young Innovators award, earning him a $30,000 grant that will help him scale XCLUSV and leave a lasting impact on his community. Fowler credits the PNC volunteer team with helping him secure the win.
Debt Capital Markets Employee Volunteers
Bring your own skillset
Sky’s the Limit is a digital platform that has served over 100,000 underrepresented entrepreneurs with business mentoring, entrepreneurship training and startup grants. PNC volunteers have been working with Sky’s the Limit since 2021.
Through his free membership on the Sky’s the Limit platform, Fowler was connected with PNC and a group of Debt Capital Markets employees who wanted to volunteer together.
“Many employees don’t realize that they already have a wealth of career and life experience that make them a valuable contributor,” said George Mestre, managing director, Loan Syndications and Debt Capital Markets. He’s been a passionate Sky’s the Limit volunteer for several years and now serves on its board. “PNC provides employees with up to 40 hours of paid time off for volunteerism each year, so we had the brainstorm of volunteering as a team to make it a very low-pressure environment. Employees who didn’t feel as confident could listen in and see the ways someone can contribute.”
Fowler faced an aggressive timeline to submit his competition pitch. Approximately 30 PNC employees participated on the team, including several interns who got the chance to experience PNC’s culture of volunteerism. Together, they watched Fowler and another entrepreneur make their practice pitches – then challenged them with practical, real-world questions they might be asked by the judges.
“We brought our business hats, having thousands of hours of collective experience analyzing businesses,” Mestre said. “We turned our expertise into action by supporting someone with an idea and giving them experience presenting in a large forum.”
Volunteering as a team also brought questions from employees across ages and experiences. “An employee in their 20s might have a different background and technical skillset than I have because I grew up in a different generation. So, they can provide more specific input on that aspect of a business,” Mestre said.
‘A weight off my shoulders’
“The PNC team gave me great feedback on gaps in my presentation,” Fowler said. “They told me the judges would better understand XCLUSV with more visuals to show how an organization can segment its audience and see increased open rates.”
He said he was shocked and excited to win the $30,000 award so he can execute on his ideas and customer requests, such as allowing organizations with similar audiences to create shared activity calendars and updating the app’s back-end analytics capabilities.
“I’ve been generating some revenue, but now that I have capital, there’s a weight off of my shoulders,” Fowler said.
Who will be our next success story?
For the PNC volunteers, what seemed like an intimidating task turned out to be a lot of fun, and easier than they expected. Mestre hopes many of them – and more untapped PNC volunteers – will sign up to help Sky’s the Limit entrepreneurs.
“No matter what your skillset or role, you have something unique to offer an entrepreneur as they look to build their business,” Mestre said.
Transcript
Leon Fowler: Hi, my name is Leon Fowler and I'm the founder of XCLUSV Communications. This message goes directly to the PNC team. I want to personally thank you. I am the 2025 award winner for the CVC Young Innovators Award and I received $30,000 in order to scale and leave a lasting impact in my community. I want to personally thank the PNC team for reviewing my pitch deck, listening to my pitch, and providing that accurate feedback that helped me adjust and provide more clarity to XCLUSV Communications and what I'm providing to the community. I look forward to great things that we're able to do with XCLUSV and the impact we can bring to these communities.
