Cupertino students win national contest for business acumen

Business acumen is inculcated early in some area schools. In Cupertino, for instance, the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) chapter at Homestead High School placed first overall at the 21st national championship in Chicago last month.

Chloe Lu and Krishna Mishra led the chapter to the win with their American Enterprise project, via which they had to demonstrate private enterprise, market competition, private property, profit motive and consumer sovereignty.

“We partnered with Whim Local, an area company, as well as two nonprofit entities: American Cancer Society’s Discovery Shop and Hong Kong-based TCK Learning Centre,” Lu said.

A major donation drive garnered them jewelry, quality clothing and appliances valued at about $10,000 for the Discovery Shop in Sunnyvale to resell and donate the proceeds to cancer research.

“It was wonderful to see the whole community come together for the benefit,” Mishra said.

TCK Learning Centre helps migrant workers from neighboring countries arriving in Hong Kong learn basic life skills and elementary Chinese. The Homestead team helped the company create a more user-friendly website.

Whim Local helps local businesses publicize their products.

“It is like an Etsy for the Bay Area,” Mishra said. “We helped them by publicizing its mission.”

The project helped team member Sanghyuk “Eric” Ko develop more than just business skills.

“This taught me the significance of social entrepreneurship,” Ko said. “Through workshops, I was able to overcome my fear of public speaking.”

Team leaders Nitya Peumans and Junsa Hwang, along with teammate Grace McGoran, placed second in the Partnership with Business project category. They worked with CK-12, an online educational resource library.

“Silicon Valley is saturated with learning programs,” Peumans said.

So, they researched the market in Southern California, Utah and Louisiana and applied what they learned to CK-12’s offerings.

“It was then that we saw the number of visits rise on their website,” Peumans said.