Twenty-nine DECA students from Eastlake High School — including some from Redmond — competed at the DECA International Career Development Conference (ICDC), which took place from April 26 to May 1 in Orlando.
More than 18,000 DECA members from the 50 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, Spain, China and other countries attended the conference.
DECA is an organization that helps promote education in business and marketing. According to a press release, DECA offers competitive events, including career cluster exams, case study events and written projects that allow students to see through the perspectives of real-life executives and managers. Top qualifiers from each state conference earned the right to compete at the international conference. Each event boasted a pool of about 180 competitors or teams, seven of which represented Washington state.
The Eastlake DECA chapter is taught and led by Brittanie Petersen and Christina Stevens. The chapter’s student leaders are its officer team — which consists of seniors Sanjana Sridhar, Josh Steckler and Megha Mattikalli and juniors Matthieu Le and Nicole Kim.
After the primary round of competitions, Mattikalli and Preksha Mittal, and the team of Mac Steckler, Preju Kanuparthy and Jack Titus all placed in the top 10 percent of their events, qualifying as international finalists and competing in one final round. Riya Yerramilli also earned an award for top role play.
At the grand awards ceremony, Steckler, Kanuparthy and Titus earned seventh place in Learn and Earn Project, while Mattikalli earned third place in Hotel and Lodging Management. By placing in the top three, Mattikalli received a DECA glass trophy, becoming only the second student in Eastlake history to win a DECA glass.
Here are the Eastlake students’ results.
Individual Series
Riya Yerramilli (Apparel and Accessories Marketing)
Megha Mattikalli (Hotel and Lodging Management)
Scotia Ouellette (Hotel and Lodging Management)
Emma Trueba (Professional Selling)
Matthieu Le (Retail Merchandising)
Team Decision Making
Hana Basu and Kesini Sunil (Travel and Tourism)
Entrepreneurship ProjectsRomir Singla, Sanjay Burugapalli, and Ritesh Boddipalli (International Business Plan)
Business Operations Research Projects
Preksha Mittal (Finance Operations)
Community Chapter Projects
Josh Steckler, Liam Bigbee, and Swathi Narayan (Creative Marketing Project)
Nicole Kim, Jack Pendleton, and Blake McLean (Entrepreneurship Promotion Project)
Sanjana Sridhar, Himani Nijhawan, and Evelyn Ahn (Financial Literacy Promotion Project)
Mac Steckler, Preju Kanuparthy, and Jack Titus (Learn and Earn Project)
Laura Wang, Anisha Singh, and Sowmika Karthik (School-Based Enterprise)
Emerging Leader AcademiesKamran Badh (Aspire Academy)
Kendall Foley (Elevate Academy)
Lucas Porter (Ignite Academy)
