Third times a charm for Ridgeview’s Virtual Enterprise program. This years two businesses are advancing to New York once again. Hoping to bring home a national title this year.
Yahaira Mata, is a junior here at Ridgeview High School and she is the VP of Marketing of Sansa. As Mata’s first year in VE, she feels super excited and a little nervous when it comes to competitions but she’s looking forward to, “winning and keeping the winning streak.” Mata says she got into the business plan by signing up for it and going through an interview process, “You have to answer questions on the spot and just be yourself.” Mata has been enjoying her time in VE stating, “of course I have fun in VE I made a lot of new friends, I got closer to a lot of people and improve my skills and learn new ones.” Mata’s goal for nationals is to be satisfied with their placement and having overall success in New York.
Alondra Rodriguez, is a senior at Ridgeview and is the Chief Executive Officer for Sansa. Rodriguez’s explains Sansa to be, “[A company] focused on selling grape leather because we do live in a society where many Millennials or Gen Z want to make a positive impact on the environment.” Rodriguez talks about her overall experience in the Virtual Enterprise program and her time as CEO,“There are some ups and downs when it comes to VE and there is a lot of pressure.” However Rodriguez has overall enjoyed her time and is passionate when it comes to the overall success of the class and her business.
Senior, Ileana Salinas is the CEO for the business Tiny Treasures, “it is a baby company that focuses on selling products that prioritize baby safety and services that offer education as well as support to parents in our community.” Salinas explains the overall effort she and her business plan has put in saying, “it is time consuming, especially if you are a executive.” She states that she has dedicated so much time to VE because it is one of her passions.
Salinas’ team placing second was an accomplishment to them just being shy behind Centennial who placed first. Salinas shares, “seeing how excited my team was, recognizing how every single person in our company played a major part in getting us to nationals and to state.” Salinas hopes to strive for first place at Nationals in New York.
Garcia has been the Virtual Enterprise teacher here for four years. He’s had multiple teams move past regionals, a first place team at state, but is still waiting to bring home the 1st place national title.
The thing Garcia really enjoys most about being the coordinator for VE is getting to know his kids, “Seeing them succeed, seeing them win, seeing them all come together.” The Two businesses representing Ridgeview this year at Nationals is Tiny Treasures who placed second at state and Sansa who placed fifth. The Virtual Enterprise coordinator Miguel Garcia helped his teams prepare for State by, “ having people coming in from the industry such as bankers and guests that can help grow [the teams] for competitions.” Garcia decides along his businesses CEO’s who he believes is worthy enough to compete by, “choosing top 6 kids that you have in your class; they have to be the most hard-working, most competitive, and the ones who are willing to sacrifice the most to get gold.”
Salinas ended with, “every single person in our company dedicated a lot to this success to us going to nationals the reason that VE was able to go and take two teams to nationals is because our class was able to set up a foundation and help us there.”
