Finance, business, leadership and so much more. If any of those interest you, then you should take a look at Mark Keppel High School’s Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) program. FBLA is a foundation that inspires America’s future business leaders in various ways such as classes, events, and activities offered at school to help enrich students in finance, business aid, public speaking, and more.
“FBLA is for everyone.” Eric Sun, Keppel senior, and FBLA president provides his encouragement to other students looking to join this program. “[While] it [is] called ‘Future Business Leaders,’ it’s not restricted to business, so even if you don’t want to go into business in the future, it is a great place to start exploring career paths. For example, we have web design, computer related, [or] even medical related events. You don’t need to be interested in business to be apart of FBLA, because the leadership skills and the collaboration abilities that you gain from our chapter [are] applicable to any field.”
Keppel’s FBLA chapter recently competed in a Section Leadership conference at Westlake High School in Thousand Oaks on Saturday, February 10, among other school’s own FBLA programs. Keppel’s FBLA advisor, Ever Heredia took a group of 50 competitors; the competition is divided into two groups which are public speaking and objective testing. Although this year, Keppel’s FBLA team did not achieve first place as they previously did the past five years in a row, Heredia is still pleased they made it to the top ten. Students who did not attend the public speaking section, completed their section the week prior with a paper test. The competition was the first for Keppel freshman, Angelina Yip, “The competition was super fun, I made a lot of friends, and memories. As a beginner, I was so nervous, but when I got there I took the stage on, everyone else had the same goal, and it was [just] really nice to be there in a community that has the same goal.”
Keppel’s FBLA Chapter now anticipates moving on to state in Anaheim in April in which they will go up against a smaller group of competitors. Objective and public speaking students get former students, resources that FBLA puts out, and test banks like Quizlet. After states, if Keppel’s FBLA places well, they can move on to nationals, but to move to states first, objective will have to accomplish top six, and speaking events will have to accomplish top two. As a whole, the number of students that are eligible for nationals will decrease after states because of the qualification criteria. However, every student has the ability to reach nationals in state only events. If you really want to find out about yourself in terms of your ability to be a leader, identify yourself as a member of society, or maybe who you are as a person, and go beyond the confines of just being in a classroom, then FBLA could be for you.
“If you want to dive deeper into who you are as a person, see your abilities, your compacities, to be that positive influential factor, not only to yourself, [but] to others, [then] FBLA is the place to be.” Heredia gives his input on FBLA, as a guide, mentor, and advisor to these students, and what students can get out of being a member of the Keppel Chapter. “It allows individuals to grow mentally, physically, [and] psychologically, at a pace that they never thought possible. We’ve had boys and girls come back and say ‘gosh, what an experience.’”
