by Caroline Dai

Juniors Emmanuelle Beaurpere and Alana Muhoza qualified for the state championship today in their competition in DECA (an organization for students interested in business). Three other Annie Wright students, Juniors Katie Erickson and Safa Safeed, and Senior Leila Bensarghin,  made the top 10 in their first DECA events.

Since Annie Wright has not formed its own DECA club, the participants went to Stadium High School and represented AWS in the competitions. Beaurpere chose Apparel Marketing for her event. Before the first competition, they chose events from different sectors of business including hospitality, fashion and merchandising and finance.

The participants practice role play and learn more about DECA. The participants are given a business situation and a position (ex: an assistant manager) and have to come up with a business idea/plan that suits the situation. The participants get ten minutes to prepare without knowing the situation in advance and ten minutes to present to a judge.

“We try to make the situation seem as real as possible,” said Beaurpere. “We went in, introduced ourselves, shook hands with the judges and made eye contact professionally, then we summarized the situation and presented our business plan. We were expected to make a visual to support our ideas/plans, for example a business card, fake iPad, graphic or poster.”

Congratulations and good luck to the DECA participants!