BUSINESS PITCH COMPETITION
BUSINESS PITCH COMPETITION
On January 25, 2019, the Fayette Business Education Partnership hosted the first ever Business Pitch Competition “Workshop Day”. 55 students from four school districts attended the workshop which was held at the Magerko Auditorium at the Community Center on the campus of Penn State Fayette. The school districts included: Brownsville, Connellsville, Laurel Highlands and Uniontnown.
Workshop day consisted of three sessions presented by Professors from Penn State Fayette Business and Corporate Communication Departments. Mr. William Gardener, Assistant Teaching Professor of Business Administration, presented on Business Finance and Business Plan and “The Art of the Pitch” was presented by Dr. Jenna LoCastro, Assistant Teaching Professor in Corporate Communications. These sessions were taught so that the students could go back to their home school to begin to work on their product or services for competition day! Following the sessions, the school districts were paired with a eight Business Advisor (two per school district) who worked with the students on coming up with a problem, solution and opportunity to start your own business. Both the Business Advisor and the school districts were encouraged to keep in contact with each other to assist during the process of completing a enhancing the product or service they came up with, developing a business plan and creating a pitch. Business Advisors included employees from Somerset Trust Company, BPU Investments, Advanced Acoustic Concepts, Joyce’s Jewlers, and White Safety.
Competition Day was held on March 20, 2019 at Penn State Fayette. Before the competition began, we invited students from school districts that were not able to attend Workshop Day and a school districts to bring some middle school students to see what the Business Pitch Competition was all about. The Fayette Business Education Partnership plans to hold a Middle School Business Pitch Competiiton beginning next year. During Competition Day, we had a full day of leadership and mind mapping training with the students and the were broke into groups of four to participate in an entrepreneurial activity. After lunch, the room was set to begin the competition. Our “Sharks” (aka Judges) for this year were: Greg Parsons of Parsons Insurance Services, Courtney Gardner of COE Distributing, and Justin Guittap of PNC Bank. Our three schools that competed in the competition were Brownsville High School, Connellsville High School and Laurel Highlands High School. All three school districts did a wonderful job! 3rd place was “Vanova Homes” from Brownsville High School, 2nd Place was “Not Just Juice” from Connellsville High School.
Our 2019 Business Pitch Competition Winner: Unrivaled Prints from Laurel Highlands High School
JOIN FAYETTE BUSINESS EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP
The Fayette Business Education Partnership is a workforce initiative of the Fayette Chamber of Commerce. If you are a workforce provider, business or a part of the education system and you would like more information on FBEP complete the form and we will contact you as soon as possible! There is no cost to participate. For more info email: info@fayettebep.org
Fayette Business Education Partnership
65 W. Main Street
Uniontown, PA 15401
p: 724.437.4571
e: info@fayettebep.org