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Hello, my name is Luke Donlon.
I am a rising senior at Scituate High School in Massachusetts. The idea to put on a Business Pitch Competition began after the district round of this past year's DECA competition. I watched my peers in my school's chapter complain that because they did not advance to the state level, they could not participate in another business competition. Identifying this problem, I created my school's first business pitch competition to fill this need.
Creating this competition was not easy, and I sought advice from a number of advisors: My teachers in the Scituate High School business department helped me work in conjunction with my school's DECA chapter and coordonate with the administration. Additionally, SHORE, a grant organization in my school district, was instrumental in providing grant funding for the event. Finally, I was fortunate enough to connect with the founder and director Georgetown University's Entrepreneurship Initiative Jeff Reid, who offered invaluable tips and guidance on how to put on a high school competition.
In addition to serving as an ancillary activity to DECA and other programs, this competition serves as an engine for student businesses. My competition offered $1,000 in total prizes as an incentive for students to pursue their award-winning businesses outside of the classroom. This summer, I decided to create a toolkit for other students to expand this opportunity to their own communities.
Today, I continue to work with groups in distributing a framework that other students can use to put on their own high school business pitch competitions. I want to replicate the success of this event in other schools. This initiative of putting a high school business pitch competition "In a Box" is about accomplishing these goals: encouraging high schoolers to embrace an entrepeneurial mindset, and making it possible for students to turn their business ideas into reality.
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