This week, ten Upper School students represented Moravian Academy proudly at DECA's 2019 International Career Development Conference held in Orlando, Florida.

At the conference, over 20,000 high school students from across the world gathered to show off their business skills in a series of competitive events. The events fall into various categories, including Business Management & Administration, Finance, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality & Tourism, and Personal Finance Literacy. DECA’s flagship evaluation process involves students participating in both a written component, such as an exam or report, and an interactive role play or presentation component with an industry professional serving as a judge. Each student participant must qualify to participate in this prestigious national conference, earning a high score at their respective state conferences held earlier in the year. (See our post about how our students shined at February's Pennsylvania state competition here.)

Congratulations to our Top 20 Blue Medal International Finalists Neil Deshmukh ‘20 and Isha Mohapatra ‘19, who were selected amongst thousands of students worldwide to move to the Final Round in their event categories! Neil and Isha were then both chosen as Top 10 Gold Medal International Finalists in their categories! Isha also won a DECA glass trophy as 2nd Place in the world in the Start-Up Business Plan Category -- ending her DECA career on a high note!

A big round of applause to all of our Upper School participants, including Isha, Neil, Naveen Ailawadi '19 (who competed in the Professional Selling Event); Archie Debbage '22, Zachary Demsky '22, Mikail Jaffer '22 (who competed as a team in the Innovation Plan category); Julius Ewungkem '20 and Avi Singh '20 (who competed as a team in the Sports & Entertainment Marketing Team Decision Making category); and Thomas Smith '20 and Dhruv Krishna '20 (who competed as a team in the Integrated Marketing Campaign-Product category). These students should be incredibly proud of their accomplishments.