Brant and the other state officers hold up an 'N' banner to symbolize Nebraska.
Anna Brant ventured to Atlanta, Georgia the week of April 22-28 for DECA nationals. Brant is a Nebraska state officer of DECA.
Brant received a Junior Legacy Award and has a state officership which allowed her to attend nationals to represent Nebraska. DECA is an association of marketing students who develop business and leadership skills through going to conferences and competitions.
“DECA prepares emerging leaders to be more career and college ready. JAG is different because you go and experience new jobs. In DECA, it is more like a personal interview and problem-solving situation. You take a test for DECA, I’m in hospitality management, and you get a roleplay,” Brant said.
Nebraska has a total of five officers for DECA: a president, three vice presidents, and a secretary.
“I’ve only been in DECA for a year and I am the only vice president of membership services. I talk about how to recruit people and how to get them to stay in DECA for multiple years,” Brant said.
Although the trip was beneficial academically, Brant expressed how going to the southeast part of the country was the best part of the trip because of the scenery.
“There are so many trees in Georgia. Being in the southeast of the state was fun, and it was really warm down there. We stayed in the hotel where The Hunger Games was filmed, and it was cool because there were 42 floors,” Brant said.
Brant and the other state officers had work to do once they got there to make sure things run smoothly. They were up late memorizing speeches to make in front of other attendees about DECA leadership. While they weren’t busy doing work, they explored the area.
“We met some people and hung out with them. We had a pool and our hotel was connected to an underground mall where we could go get food and shop,” Brant said.
Most of the people Brant met at DECA nationals had no idea what Nebraska was like. One of Brant’s favorite parts of the trip was communicating with others who weren’t from Nebraska.
“I liked talking to random people from places like Florida, and they had no clue what Nebraska was like. They asked me if I rode horses to school, and people think Nebraska is in the wild, wild west,” Brant said, although some people had horses and also great fences for that, click here to find more.
Since people at DECA nationals did not know much about Nebraska, Brant hopes to have more recruits next year and more people qualify for nationals.
“Next year we plan to have a lot more people in it. Our goal is to get at least 30 people to state. It looks great on resumes and it’s a problem-solving situation where you have 10 minutes to make up a speech, so it’s really hard to do well on it. People who know what DECA is like think it’s crazy that I get to be a state officer,” Brant said.
