ALMA — The Alma College chapter of the Business Professionals of America (BPA) competed in the Postsecondary State Leadership Conference for Michigan in Grand Rapids in February and won 24 total awards, including 12 first-place awards.

“We worked hard to prepare for this event and were ultimately proud with how we finished,” said Victoria Posey, a sophomore business major from Alma. “This was a good tune-up before our national conference in a couple of months, in which we hope to win even more.”

The BPA team will take part in the 2024 National Leadership Conference in May in Orlando, Fla.

Among the first-place award winners at Alma College were Perci Wolday, who won a first prize in the Administrative Support Concepts and Computer Programming Concepts categories, and Hannah Gyolai, who won first prizes in the Banking and Finance and Fundamental Spreadsheet Applications categories.

Chloe Anderson won first prizes in the Advanced Interview Skills and Management, Marketing and Human Resources Concepts category, while Posey won first prizes in the Health Administration Procedures and Parliamentary Procedure Concepts categories.

Emily Kraenzlein won a first prize in the Graphic Design Promotion category and Pearl Amedagbe won a first prize in the Health Insurance and Medical Billing category. Wassim Guerfali won a first prize in the Basic Office Systems and Procedures category. As a team, Amedagbe, Hiba Belhaj and Elizabeth Mukurazita won a first-place award in the Podcast Production Team category.

“BPA is one of those student organizations that anyone can join, regardless of their major,” said business professor Andy Singer, who is the advisor of the Alma College BPA. “It’s a very diverse organization and our students take trips annually to big cities across the United States that host these national conferences. We think it’s a great organization to be a part of and we’d love to see it grow even larger than it is now.”

A full list of winners is below:

  • Fundamental Word Processing: Emily Kraenzlein (2nd)
  • Fundamental Spreadsheet Applications: Emily Kraenzlein (2nd)
  • Health Administration Concepts: Emily Kraenzlein (2nd) and Victoria Posey (3rd)
  • Health Administration Procedures: Pearl Amedagbe (2nd)
  • Human Resource Management: Chloe Anderson (2nd)
  • Legal Office Procedures: Victoria Posey (2nd)
  • Meeting and Event Planning Concepts: Wassim Guerfali (3rd)
  • Parliamentary Procedure Concepts: Widad Hajji (2nd)
  • Prepared Speech: Nayonikaa Singhaal (3rd)
  • Digital Marketing Concepts: Elizabeth Mukurazita (2nd) and Wassim Guerfali (3rd)