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Foothill High School’s DECA student organization was one of the top groups at the district Career Development Conference held last weekend in San Ramon.
Tami Raaker, the school’s DECA advisor, said the Falcons “soared to the top” at the highly-competitive conference, where about 800 high school students from Northern California competed in 36 different events and categories, ranging from Retail Merchandising to Sports and Entertainment Marketing.
“We had one the highest number of winners at Nor Cal this year,” Raaker said. “We may not be the largest chapter in the district but we certainly know how to produce winners.”
Raaker said that by attending the conference, students had the opportunity to compete in a variety of simulated business situations. Judges for the competitions came from the business sector that the event simulates and gives students a true representation of the industry they are competing in.
She said Foothill DECA had great support from former students and business leaders, including members of the Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club members who served as judges.
Others included Shruti Thundiyil, Yenha Cho, Atra Kermani, Allie Raaker, Yash Nagda, Kavya Methukupaly, Aditi Jhanwar, Jon Hill, Shabnam Mashoon, Frankie Perez, Tadeh Sarkis, Jared Shohfi and Dylan Gubersky, who came home from college to help.
Among Foothill DECA students competing were Joseph Aimar, Shivi Bhatnagar, Jeffrey Chen, Leeane Chen, Sarah Chew, Anmol Gupta, Jeff Huang, Charles Jin, Hannah Kim, Brian Lee, Matt Lee, Byron Lo, Emma Longridge, Hamza Nawaz, Neha Nirkondar, Christine Oh, Ayesha Omarali, Rohan Punamia, Luka Qin, Crystal Tang and Stephanie Yu.
DECA is an international student marketing association which prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the globe. It also promotes understanding and appreciation of the free enterprise system as well as the responsibilities of citizenship.
Pleasanton Weekly staff
Pleasanton Weekly staff
Foothill is an awesome school- so glad my kids go there! Go Falcons!!!
I judged this event and I can tell you from an entirely non-biased opinion that Foothill rocked this event-so much talent- also have to give a shout out to Amador- the one person I judged from there gave a truly amazing performance. They make Pleasanton proud~
Congratulations kids! Awesome work.
Thanks for the positive comments! It is encouraging to both my students and myself! We truly appreciate the support of our community. We are always looking for judges 🙂 if anyone wants to join in the fun! In fact, we are looking for judges at our State Conference March 1st & 2nd in Santa Clara. If you have an interest, contact me at traaker@pleasantonusd.net
I would just like to say that I am proud of everyone who competed and won at Norcal! 🙂 I myself and my teammates were very surprised that we took 3rd at the competition for our category. With hard work and determination, it paid off. We could not have succeeded without the help of our amazing advisor Mrs. Raaker, our Foothill DECA officers, and our amazing alumni who came back to give us a lending hand as they took time out of their day to help us progress. I’m so happy that I joined the class, it has taught me very many useful values in life, skills, and organization. I really hope that many more students will continue to take the two business classes at Foothill and are able to thrive at the competitions coming in the next years for them. So happy I had friends who encouraged and excited me to take the class. Although it is my senior year and I’m only able to be in DECA for one year, it is by far the best class choice and life choice I have made 🙂
I had the opportunity to be a judge this year and was quite amazed. For the most part, the students were well prepared for their presentation and had good ideas. In my section the students who signed up for my “specialty” were give the first two pages of a problem while I was give then entire six. The student was given ten minutes to read, understand and prepare a presentation to me a business owner who had a problem. The other four pages of the problem offered suggested alternative solutions for my understanding. I as amazed at the presentation for most and the moxy of others – one student greeted me confidently and with excitement and then proceeded to tell me that she needed to do more study and would get back to me. She got a low score but I was impressed with her approach of confidence in the face of knowing she would fail.
All in all it was a great experience and I was fatigued at the end of the day from the intensity of listening to all of maybe 15 presentations during the day. Give it a try of the opportunity arises.