NVIT student places 3rd in business contest

Tanisha Suzuki, right, and two of her teammates make items to sell for the marketing/sales challenge.

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Nicola Valley Institute of Technology student Tanisha Suzuki and her group was awarded third place in a national business competition in Ottawa last month.

The Young Entrepreneur Symposium, hosted by the New Relationship Trust and Cree Nation Youth Council, included over 100 people who competed in the Delta Hotel ballroom.

“You weren’t allowed to know anyone in your group beforehand,” Suzuki said. “If you did, they would come by and take you out of your group and put you with a new one.”

That placed Suzuki with people from all over Canada.

“That was kind of intimidating, being put into a completely different group,” she said.

Each team was tasked with completing several challenges, including creating a business name and dynamic to decide who would be a leader.

One of the challenges had each group focused on creating a business superhero.

“Ours was the ‘Boardroom Bandit,’” Suzuki said. “We named ours after one of the guest speakers there who is an astrophysicist.”

In another challenge, each group created a script, which was then made into a commercial for a company.

A professional business filmed the commercial, while the students wrote the script and directed.

The group was given a $1,000 award after being judged by business professionals.

Suzuki said one of the biggest benefits she gained from participating was the connections she made.

“I can get help from them with a lot of stuff already, just calling them up and knowing that I can contact them,” she said. “It really paid off, because I am at the end of my time at NVIT, and I have really taken the basics of everything you would deal with in the business world.

“I was really able to tie what I learned in school to each of the challenges.”

She also made connections during conferences over the year in Vancouver and Prince George.

Suzuki qualified by placing first in the regionals in Vancouver last year. New Relationship Trust, which hosted that event, took notice and sponsored Suzuki’s competition in the nation’s capital.

NRT paid for her trip and put her up at the Delta Ottawa Hotel.

She stayed in Ottawa from Nov. 18 to 23.

“I had a day to myself to see Parliament and go shopping and see all the sights around there,” she said.