What we talked about
Phi Pham is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Building Beats, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering young people through DJing, digital music production, and creative workshops that integrate entrepreneurial, leadership, and life skills. Since its founding in 2009, Building Beats has reached thousands of youth across New York, Los Angeles, and beyond, helping them discover their creative voice while preparing them for success far outside the music studio.
Show notes
Phi Pham started Building Beats in 2009 with a napkin-sketch idea and a DJ’s understanding of community organizing, and built it into a nonprofit that has since reached over 10,000 young people across New York and Los Angeles. What makes the organization unusual is not just the music curriculum but the business model: schools pay for the workshops, which Phi argues creates a level of accountability that donation-funded programs rarely achieve.
What we covered
- Phi describes the DJ as a natural community organizer, someone who brings people together, makes things happen, and builds movements, and how that mental model became the foundation for Building Beats’ entire youth leadership approach.
- One student, Jada, started in Building Beats workshops as a high schooler in Far Rockaway, New York, moved to LA for music business school, and eventually became the face of Building Beats’ LA expansion, a full arc from student to teacher.
- Building Beats originally planned to be a grant-making foundation that funded other music studios. After helping launch a program in Brazil, Phi pivoted to actually running the workshops himself, which became the sustainable model they’ve operated for 12 years.
- The organization operates on a B2B model, schools are the paying clients, which Phi says forced the team to treat quality seriously in a way that donor-funded programs often don’t. Word of mouth from happy school partners drives most of their growth.
- Phi keeps workshops culturally relevant by building lesson plans around the artists students actually listen to, currently Billie Eilish and Bruno Mars instead of Biggie and Tupac, and even incorporating TikTok trends, anime, and K-pop into the curriculum.
- Looking ahead, Phi’s vision is an engagement-first learning model, “learn what you love until you love to learn”, and he is actively experimenting with AI music tools like Suno and ElevenLabs’ music features to understand how they will shape what Building Beats does next.
About Phi
Phi Pham is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Building Beats, a nonprofit he launched in 2009 that uses DJ culture and digital music production to teach entrepreneurship, leadership, and life skills to young people in New York, Los Angeles, and online.
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/phihkpham
- Website: https://buildingbeats.org
Episode 50 of the PreVetted Podcast.