Alli Redd was a transfer student from Houston. Vin Somasundaram was an incoming freshman.
Neither had any clue what FBLA was.
Fast forward two years and the two Olympia High School students, along with 10 classmates, are heading to Atlanta to compete in the 2016 Future Business Leaders of America’s National Leadership Conference, an event that will draw approximately 11,000 high school students from around the United States.
Joining Redd and Somasundaram at the national conference, which will run June 29 through July 3, will be fellow Olympia students Harrison Collet, Jordan Jekel, Nicholas Taylor, Monica Tsien, Parth Mungra, Christopher Justin Ong, June Jeng, Anna Thornton, Christina Tsien and Amanda Nath.
“FBLA is the largest career and technical student organization, in the U.S. with 250,000 plus members,” said Olympia High School teacher Skip Fabritius, who also serves as the school’s FBLA adviser. “There is going to be 11,000 students competing. If you break everything down and do the math you can see how impressive it is for someone to make it to nationals.”
Participants at the national conference will compete in 70 events, including accounting, business law, economics, banking and financial systems, entrepreneurship, marketing and public speaking, among others.
In addition to competitions and business skill building, FBLA also focuses heavily on community service projects and college readiness.
“We have a lot of active members. They aren’t here just to get something on their resume,” said Fabritius, who has guided the Bears to five top 10 national placings in advanced accounting during his tenure. “I don’t have any interest in building a fun, resume club. I want to provide them with something they can walk away with. I want solid kids who have a purpose in what they are doing. I have amazing kids in the club. I have students here that want to succeed.”
With 88 members, Olympia sports one of the largest membership chapters in the state. The dozen students who are competing at nationals advanced by winning their selected competitions at the Washington State Capital Region Conference.
“I moved here and the very first day a student asked me what clubs I was going to join,” Redd said. “I didn’t know. He suggested I should try FBLA. I seriously had no idea what it was. I went to the meeting at the end of the week and absolutely fell in love with it. It has certainly helped with the transition (of moving).”
By the end of the year, Redd was running for Capital Region vice president. This upcoming year she will serve as state president, helping lead Washington and its 4,500 members.
“FBLA is a lot about competition and networking, and a lot about communication and community service projects,” Redd said, “but I am so more focused on planning the conferences, and getting people to come and piecing together the budgets. I am much more interested in making it all work.”
This will be the second trip to the national conference for Somasumdaram. The sophomore finished eighth overall nationally in Public Speaking 1 at the Chicago conference.
Just nine months before he was wowing judges on the national scene in the Windy City, Somasumdaram was a freshman wandering through the high school’s annual fall club and career fair, having little thought on which extra-curricular activity he wanted to cut his teeth on.
Not long after he stepped into the gym Somasundaram was being sold on the program by Evan Taylor, last year’s FBLA president.
The pitch obviously worked as Somasundaram has excelled within the club since.
“It’s evolved into a community. For me it’s helped create a lot of friendships. I’ve built a lot of skills within me that I didn’t know I had before high school, and it’s just a way for me to connect with people, learn some new business skills and just have fun in the process,” Somasundaram said. “I think this really brings you into the real world. You learn in middle school, but you don’t really know too much about what is after high school. This really puts you a step further.”
Last year Olympia had eight students advance to nationals. Somasundaram was the only one to place.
“Just getting there is a huge accomplishment,” Fabritius said. “Getting on stage is really pretty remarkable. Less than three-quarters of one percent (of the nation’s FBLA members) are making it up on that stage.”
