by Adam Colbert
Like father (or mother), like son. That’s what juniors Connor Bentley, Steven Rivela and Dan Bothwell all can say as they follow in the footsteps of their parents who have business careers.
Bentley won first place in the project management concepts event for Business Professionals of America(BPA). On March 2, thirteen students competed at the State Leadership Conference in Framingham. Students who finished in the top two in their event move on to nationals in Orlando, Florida, in May.
Other students who qualified were Christina Butler who won first place in the desktop publishing event and the team of Steven Rivela, Dan Bothwell and Andrew Wienen for their second place finish in the global marketing team event.
BPA’s mission is to prepare a world-class workforce through the advancement of leadership and citizenship as well as academic and technological skills.
Bentley got first place on a business test. The test contained questions about business terms (e.g., “What is a CEO?”) and what-would-you-do questions for project management. He learned most of the information from BPA and his father, who is a project manager at Raytheon, a military equipment company. Bentley chose that field of business because of his father. Also, he felt like he had the best chance to succeed if he competed in project management. He was surprised that he came in first place because he did not expect to do that well.
He decided to compete because “it looked good on a college transcript, [and he had] always been interested in business.” Bentley hopes to someday run his own business because he wants to be self-employed.
Bentley enjoyed BPA because it was fun, and he met new people. BPA is different from other clubs because it has “more interaction with other people, and it prepares you better for the business world.” He has added many Facebook friends from all over Massahcusetts after the state competition. He says in BPA, you actually work with people, not just learn the same stuff as them in a classroom.
Juniors Steven Rivela, Andrew Wienen and Dan Bothwell also participated in BPA. They gave the global marketing team presentation and finished second in the state. They practiced their presentation and poster board for two weeks, and they plan to improve even more for nationals. To improve, they “plan on practicing our speech more as well as altering our plan based upon the judges’ feedback.” The judges told them they loved the presentation, but they would like to see a three year timeline.
For their global marketing presentation, they were given an idea of a business and developed a marketing plan on how to expand internationally and domestically. The marketing plan consists of pricing strategy, company goals and target consumers.
Like Bentley, Bothwell and Rivela both have parents who work in the business industry. Bothwell’s mother works as a project manager for Raytheon, and his father works as a manager for Wayne-Dalton garage door company. Rivela’s father is a manager at RBI, an indoor batting cage in West Boylston.
They picked global marketing for the competition, so they could work together as a team on the presentation. Wienen was the one that dragged Bothwell and Rivela to the BPA meetings back in the fall.
Rivela plans to participate in BPA again because it was interesting, and you “meet people from other schools and other states.”
Other Hudson High students that placed in the event include Natalie Monteiro, who won fifth place in graphic design promotion; Marisa Duplisea, who won fourth place for her interviewing skills event; the broadcast news team of Shayna Diedrich and Kayla Davis, who won fifth place; and the presentation management team of Alyssa Dalton, Renae Barry and Marisa Duplisea, who placed sixth.
