Julie Young is a Principal Entrepreneur

Like a dot-com founder whose company never went bust, Julie Young has steered an internet-based growth rocket for 15 years. Since creating the first state online school — the proverbial "first mover advantage" in investing lingo — she's parlayed it into a $120-million-a-year operation that's among the nation's largest K-12 schools, with so many students that it's bigger than 41 of the state's 67 geographically defined districts.

And after all that growth, Young and Florida Virtual School may just be getting started. Her operation enrolled more than 120,000 Florida students in 2010-11 in more than 110 courses, from driver's education to Advanced Placement Art History.

Florida Virtual has even developed a global brand, with students in 49 states and 46 countries taking classes. This year, Young inked a revenue-sharing deal with textbook publisher Pearson to sell Florida Virtual's courses nationally as "Pearson Virtual Learning Powered by Florida Virtual School."

Former Gov. Jeb Bush, who encouraged the online school initiative, says Young has created "by far and away, the largest government-sponsored virtual school, many, many fold."

Not bad for someone who didn't even know she was an entrepreneur until she had been one for several years.

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