Business management senior Michael Gill spent a lot of time picturing his group’s name as the first place winners of the “Exporting with Experts” export market plan competition at UTA, and he got to experience that win Saturday.
The university’s “Exporting with Experts” program was a virtual workshop that taught students how to create an export plan for products and services over two weekends. The program included four teams that needed to make a market plan report for their assigned company, said management distinguished professor Abdul Rasheed.
The participants presented their plan to partners from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the North Texas District Export Council, who decided the winners. Enrollment in the program was free to students.
Gill’s team report for Avazzia, a health and wellness technology company, won the first place $2,000 scholarship prize.
“I’ve never won first place with one of these extracurricular projects before, so this is just a blessing,” he said. “I’m so thankful.”
International business senior Eduardo Diaz’s group faced a challenge before presentations when one of their members couldn’t make it to the event because he felt sick. This made the whole group nervous.
“Literally an hour before the presentation we just had to figure out, ‘OK how much information can we absorb and how well can we execute it,’” he said. “I feel like we did fairly well.”
Diaz’s team wrote a report for CX International, a microbial product company, and won the second place $1,000 prize. Overall, he felt his group did well, and they were bound to get some prize money.
Presentations were followed up by a series of questions and answers in which the judges asked about each team’s report.
Two of the four teams walked away with scholarship prizes, but all 18 students involved received a certificate from the U.S. Department of Commerce stating they have completed the program, Rasheed said.
The scholarship prize and the certificate were all factors for Diaz when he decided to join the program. He also felt like it was a good experience to collaborate with people.
“I really think that more people should do this, I’m glad that we were [a part] of 18 people that got certificates. I think that’s really special,” he said. “I think that’s really important for our resume.”
@MandyHuynh12
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