End of Year Recap, Farewell from previous Webmaster

Ridge FBLA,

This year in Ridge FBLA was one to be remembered.

This year, our 65 members gave back to the community, learned valuable business skills for their future, and competed for Peachtree Ridge from the regional to the national level!

We had numerous winners at the Region Leadership Conference, with 3 1st place finishes.

Our State Leadership Conference winners were:

James Lee and Sanisha Shah, 2nd in Marketing (team) and 7th in Hospitality Management (team)

Sumedh Garimella, 5th in Business Calculations

Tejas Shah, 9th in Coding and Programming

We also sent two members to the National Leadership Conference for the first time in 3 years, with Sanisha Shah (Marketing) and Sumedh Garimella (Business Calculations) representing us in Baltimore, MD. We even had our time to shine on the stage, with Sanisha placing 6th in the nation in Marketing with her Georgia FBLA superteam! We learned a lot at NLC and hope to use those lessons to improve our chapter and bring even more of you to San Antonio and the 2019 NLC next summer!

While our 2017-18 officer team worked hard to serve you this year, we believe your 2018-19 officer team will be even more outstanding and accomplish even greater things in the upcoming year.

The 2018-19 Ridge FBLA Officer Team is as follows:

Adviser: Mrs. Heath

Co-Presidents: James Lee (senior), Sanisha Shah (senior)

Vice President: Michael Istakhorov (junior)

Secretary: Sahil Narsingani (junior)

Treasurer: Ansh Malbari (sophomore)

PR Chair: Victoria Truong (senior)

And for the first time, we are introducing committees, to give even more of our members opportunities to lead their fellow FBLA members, and to bring in fresher ideas and more involvement from within our chapter.

Our PR Committee will be led by Andy Park (sophomore), while our Fundraising Committee will include former officers Sakina Bhatti (senior) and Reanna Rafiq (junior).

We will be adding more committees and committee members as our chapter grows and develops in the following year, so if you are interested in leading your chapter and are not an officer for the year (or want to be an officer in future years...), stay tuned for more information on our committees.

And finally, we get to the most emotional part, the farewell to our seniors. We had 7 seniors earn their Honor Cords by being diligent and involved members of our chapter:

Shannon Davis, who has attended numerous conferences and has been very involved over the past 3 years, will be attending the University of Chicago this fall.

Kristin Ewing, another committed member for the past 3 years, will be attending the University of Georgia this fall.

Jane Hong, who has been greatly involved in the chapter for the past 3 years, will be attending the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) this fall.

Rebekah Oh, who has served as a chapter officer for the past 3 years, will be attending the University of Georgia.

Gurman Kaur and Nathaly Hernandez, who have been involved for the past 3-4 years, did not reveal their plans following graduation.

And the last one on this list of graduating seniors, is me, Sumedh Garimella. As my FBLA membership officially ends at 11:59 PM tonight, I thought I would share some of my final thoughts and reflections on my time in Ridge FBLA, since I didn't get the chance to do so at our last meeting.

When I walked into my first FBLA meeting 4 years ago, I didn't realize how much of an impact FBLA would have in my life. As I began coming to service events, then the Region Conference, and finally began competing in events like Business Math and Intro to Business, I started to see that FBLA was becoming an ever bigger part of my niche in high school.

I think the turning point in my time in FBLA was the 2015 State Leadership Conference. I was on stage for finishing in the top 10 in the Introduction to Business event, which was based on the IBT class I had taken in the fall semester. As I heard my fellow competitors named called, I anxiously waited to see whether I would get a spot at NLC in Chicago. When I was announced as the statewide 1st place winner, my confidence grew, and I was no longer the shy, nervous kid in the corner at meetings. I felt like a leader, and I truly believed that I could help my fellow FBLA members and my community reach new heights.

As the VP of Membership in my sophomore year, I immediately began trying to take this chapter to new heights. This started with this very website, which I started in the summer after freshman year. I envisioned a Peachtree Ridge FBLA which was even more involved, more successful, and ready to lead our country in the future due to the officer team's ability to communicate with the entire chapter, and involve each and every member in our chapter's activities. And over the past 3 years, as a local chapter officer for Peachtree Ridge High School, I have done that each and every day, from leading the Battle of the Chapters team to attending almost every conference for the past 3 years, including this years NLC.

As I enter my freshman year at Georgia Tech this fall, the lessons and experiences from FBLA will guide me. But what are these lessons? What experiences will resonate within me for years to come? Sure, I won lots of awards and medals in competing for and serving this chapter. I was an officer for 3 years. I ran this website for that long as well. But that pales in comparison to what I will really take from this experience. I apologize for the bragging I have done about my experiences for the last few paragraphs, but I really want you to know how much this chapter has meant to me, and what I will take from my experiences.

What I will truly take away from my experiences is the idea that with hard work and perseverence, I can do anything and contribute in a meaningful way to the world. We are the Future Business Leaders of America, and so it seems fitting that I summarize this point in those words.

Future: From competing, to doing a BAA, to deciding to apply to become a chapter officer, I had to decide to take initiative. I had to develop the confidence to say 'I can do this.'. We are the future politicians, innovators, and citizens who will lead the world through old and new challenges alike, and we must be confident and competent to take new risks and try new things in solving the everyday problems the world encounters.

Business: One of the best experiences of my FBLA career was the Entrepreneurship track at Fall Leadership Conference, which is basically a pitch competition. Those days I spent working with new friends to develop new products and market them inspired me to unlock my entrepreneurial spirit and gave me new ideas and projects that I am working on to this day. If you ever get the chance to go to FLC, I highly recommend this track.

Leadership: Throughout the past 4 years, I have learned that leadership is about action, rather than positions and titles. Whether or not you have an officer or committee title, you can be a leader by taking initiative, helping others lead themselves and improving society and your community through proactive planning and execution of those plans.

America: Competing in FBLA and being an officer in this chapter made me proud of my community, proud of Peachtree Ridge. Similiarly, to be a leader of this great nation in the coming years, you must take ownership of your community, of where you come from, of your country and society, in order to enact change and make the world a better place.

I know that these lessons will serve me and my fellow graduating seniors in the near future. These are the essence of being in FBLA, and I believe that if you work hard and take initiative in the happenings and events of our chapter, you too can unlock these skills and lessons in order to not only make our chapter better than ever, but to make our community, our society, and our world, and of course, your lives, the best that they could ever be.

Thank you, Mrs. Tan, for introducing me to the world of FBLA in your Introduction to Business Technology class, and for helping me develop the confidence and competence I needed to be a leader in this chapter.

Thank you to my other advisers, Mrs. Walton and Mrs. Heath, for assisting me in my FBLA journey and for teaching me that leadership is more than a fancy title on a resume.

Thank you to my fellow officers, for helping me in the past 3 years to make my vision of Ridge FBLA more of a reality, and for believing in my vision as a nervous freshman with an idea.

And as my time in FBLA draws to a close, I thank each and every one of you, the members of Ridge FBLA, for making my journey memorable. If it wasn't for your dedication to our chapter and developing your own leadership by being a part of FBLA, as you maintained patience with some of my cringeworthy moments in expressing my passion for this chapter and for FBLA, and showed up to each meeting and conference, ready to learn more, these 4 years would be meaningless. I will cherish these memories for a long time, and I hope you will as well. Good luck, and goodbye, Ridge FBLA!

Sincerely,

Sumedh Garimella

former VP/webmaster, Ridge FBLA

Peachtree Ridge '18

Georgia Tech '22

P.S. If you have been using and checking the website for the past few years, as I hoped you would, thank you! I hope that future members of our great chapter keep this alive and develop this into an even better 'hub of everything Ridge FBLA'.