ILS’s Distributive Education Club of America, more commonly referred to as DECA, recently participated at the Florida State Career Development Conference, also known as CDC, resulting in two members, seniors Isabella Puglisi and Victoria Pla, the club’s respective President and Vice President, qualifying for the International Development Conference, which will take place later this month in Anaheim, California.
DECA, which was established earlier this year by Isabella Puglisi, is a high school and college program for students who are interested in business. The organization’s priority is to help prepare students to become leaders and entrepreneurs, for careers in management, finance, hospitality, and management.
“The event I competed in is called Business Service Operations Research, where you basically get a prompt every year and you have to partner with any business and study them and propose a plan to solve whatever the prompt is,” Isa Puglisi shared.
“The prompt this year was Post COVID retention rates and how to hire, train, on-board, and keep employees. We chose ILS and wanted to focus on the teacher shortage. We came up with a plan called ‘Teach Today, Teach Tomorrow, Teach.’ Teach Today focused on short-term retention strategies that ILS can implement, while Teach Tomorrow focused on more long-term things,” she continued.
At the CDC, which was in Orlando, the club delivered a 15-minute presentation on their findings and gave their solution in front of a judge. Turns out, they won first place in the state.
The next step is Internationals, where 20,000 teens from around the US, Europe, China, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and more will be competing.
Throughout the whole preparation process for the competition, the club worked closely with Mr. Juan Carlos Moya, who leads the Global Studies program, and the plan they came up with is actually going to be used by ILS itself.
DECA is led by an exec board of five people, with Isa Puglisi as President and Victoria Pla as Vice President.
“I’m the person who brought DECA to the school. It’s the first year, as last year I worked on filing all the paperwork for the club. It’s been really great. We’ve had an amazing number of students who want to do it. I mean the fact that four out of six of us are going to internationals in the first year is crazy,” Isa Puglisi remarked.
“There are shows and it’s like a whole performance. It’s honestly genuinely super, super fun. Everyone’s nice and happy and wants you to succeed, so I would highly recommend doing it,” she added.
Next year, membership in DECA will be mandatory for business students, similar to HOSA.
“I felt that I was able to combine my unique interests and experiences with innovative business ideas, and I think everyone at the conference had something valuable to share,” said Vice President Victoria Pla.
If you’re interested in joining DECA, be sure to reach out to one of the team moderators/representatives. Keep an eye out for updates on how they perform at Internationals!
