The American Enterprise project is an FBLA competition in which students have an opportunity to impact the students, school, and community in a positive way. Two South juniors competing as a team this year have impacted our female students going into business through their efforts.

 Students Nikki Garikota and Sritha Neeli have been working towards their goal of “encouraging more women to join the field of business and promoting women empowerment by educating and uplifting our community of women in business.”

Throughout their journey, they have held several events in helping to promote and educate others on this prevailing issue. 

The first event was interviewing a female Cornell University student currently studying business. Through this event, Garikota and Neeli gained insight about what it’s like to be a female studying business. Their second event was holding a movie night fundraiser. During this event, they raised about a $120 for the Center of Women and Enterprise while watching the movie “Joy” (2015), a film that is focused on becoming a female entrepreneur.

Their third event was the RLC workshop.  The CTSO students who attended this workshop had a collaborative discussion on the issue of women and business and brainstormed solutions to help this issue.

Their fourth event is interviewing the CEO of Dormify, Amanda Zuckerman. During this event, they learned what it is like to be a female entrepreneur leading a multimillion-Dollar company and the struggles associated with it. 

Their last event was a resume building workshop. During this workshop, South Forsyth High School FBLA advisor, Carla Yonk, taught female FBLA members on how to create a resume and why its so important. This helped build the hard skill of resume-building.

Throughout the duration of the project, Garikota and Neeli ran a social media campaign focusing on the promoting women in enterprise and providing others resources regarding what they can do to help. 

Throughout this project, students gained valuable hard skills like resume-building through our workshop, and were given multiple opportunities to set up, participate in, and learn from our school events. They also applied important concepts from the American Enterprise system, such as problem-solving, leadership, and communication. Furthermore, they provided specialized advice and opportunities, which resulted in raising awareness of gender inequality in the community.

One FBLA member noted the project’s success in offering new opportunities and promoting women’s empowerment. They expanded their research and impact by beyond the school and FBLA by collaborating with the Launch project and other CTSO members, and raised community awareness through a successful social media campaign that engaged students from schools county-wide.

Overall, their goal is to aspire to inspire and empower more women to join the field of business. Their aim is to promote women’s empowerment by educating and uplifting our community of women in business. Their events focused on the inequality of women in business and it  played an important role in promoting gender equality and driving positive change.

By raising awareness, building connections, educating attendees, empowering women, and inspiring action, their  events made a meaningful difference in the lives of women and in the business world as a whole.