Nine students from the Naveen Jindal School of Management traveled to Chicago this June for the National Leadership Conference of the Future Business Leaders of America Collegiate — and took home several awards for their efforts.

Previously known as Phi Beta Lambda, FBLA Collegiate is the collegiate arm of Future Business Leaders of America, an organization dedicated to developing middle school, high school, and collegiate leaders by preparing members for careers in business and business-related fields. Of the 16 JSOM students who qualified at state for the national conference, nine of those traveled to Chicago. Six of those nine placed in their individual competitions.

Vidhesha Vaid, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology Systems this past May, placed in three separate categories: she earned first place in Project Management, second place in Management Concepts, and sixth place in Programming Concepts. Vaid attributes her interest in business to her membership in Future Business Leadership of America throughout high school.

“Competing and placing at the national conference was an incredible way for me to close out my college experience,” she said. “Nevertheless, I hope the FBLAC chapter at UTD continues to grow and Comets proceed to bring home national wins!” Dr. Kathryn Lookadoo joined the group as their new faculty advisor this year after taking over from Dr. Kristen Lawson. “This spring, Dr. Lawson and I had two main goals: one, host a successful virtual state leadership conference and two, recruit more UTD students to FBLAC,” she said. “As the new advisor, I was excited to take nine members to nationals.”

Sid Sridharan, a junior finance major, also traveled to nationals and placed in the Macroeconomics category. Sridharan will serve as both UTD’s chapter president and as the Texas State Vice President for Communications. After having primarily attended virtual meetings during his first year in the group, he said he is looking forward to the year ahead and is especially excited to be working with Lookadoo. “She is a very involved advisor and I think having her will make it much easier to grow the organization,” he said. “I am also excited to see the other FBLA Collegiate chapters in Texas as well, seeing what can be done to improve them and grow overall membership.”

Lookadoo said that the conference was a good experience for the group to bond as an organization that has primarily been virtual for the past two years. “After nationals, we are eager to grow our organization this year and represent UT Dallas at both the state and national level,” she said.