After a long semester of fundraising events, spirit nights and social media challenges, Lambert DECA now looks to focus on competition at the state and international level. The club just came back from the 2025 Region Competition, but the majority of competitors start from the state level through manual and roleplay events. If members are able to place at State, they advance to the International Career Development Conference(ICDC), where they may place at the international level. Both officers and members are putting their all into ensuring the club can hopefully take home the DECA Glass. Vice President of Competition Isha Barochia is working hard to make sure all members are prepared for State by providing testing materials and perfecting manuals.
“We’re doing a lot more for penalty points because a lot of members got some silly points taken off because they had the dimensions wrong, so this year we’re implementing a penalty point check,” Barochia mentioned. “Each officer is going to be looking over everyone’s manuals and then checking for penalty points…because that can be the difference between placing and not placing a lot of the time.”
Although the process of crafting a manual and preparing for a test can be laborious, the work up until the competition can be exactly the opposite. Most DECA manual competitions involve a lot of community engagement, such as with local businesses to help the businesses as well as enhance their own skills.
“We have to interview them[the business] and do surveys, so it really helps with talking to people, “ Barochia noted. “And also if you’re interested in project management, things like that in your real job, there’s a lot of finance events where you get to talk to people and deal with actual finances.”
As a club, DECA helps their members gain confidence and grow in their journey to be ready for careers in the business world — professionally and personally. For current DECA co-president Rhea Nair, the club helped her gain confidence starting her freshman year. Throughout her DECA journey, she has grown from a shy freshman officer to a self-assured leader.
“I think the main thing is even though you may be shy and you are scared to present in front of professionals, just put yourself out there.” Nair emphasized. “I feel like DECA really improves public speaking and talking to people who you’ve never met before.”
Nair and the other officers have been working towards helping members grow in confidence as well. Since DECA places so much emphasis on presentation skills, the chapter has been consistently giving the competitors as much practice as they can get to improve.
“We have practice presentations where they can practice their competition in front of alumni or even teachers and we give them a lot of feedback,” Nair said.
Although Lambert DECA puts their all into competitions and tries to help members place, the club isn’t all about taking home first place. DECA aims to provide a space for all their members aside from manuals or roleplays.
“I think at Lambert DECA we have a lot of events that aren’t competition focused, like we hold spirit nights, we have community events,” Nair said. “We just started a pitch deck this year, like a pitch competition, where you can pitch an idea and it has nothing to do with competing at state.”
Through such opportunities, members can keep in mind the main goal of the club: helping students develop their own professional skills. DECA competitions provide an incredible way for students to build real-life skills, and their preparations will surely pay off.
