Students Pitch Business Ideas to Panel of Judges


Jocelyn Park, executive director and owner, APLUS Education, and Craig Robinson, senior vice president investment manager at Truist Bank, listen to student business pitches.
Entrepreneurial students from six high schools participated in the annual MCPS Business Pitch Challenge on March 22. They created business ideas and presented them to a panel of local entrepreneur judges. Participating high schools were: Montgomery Blair, Albert Einstein, Gaithersburg, Northwest, Northwood and Paint Branch.

Northwood High School students present during the annual Business Pitch Challenge competition.
The winning team was Macarious Adjingbaruk, Leah DeMetz and Kelvin Hernandez from Northwood, whose business idea was a financial literacy app aimed at helping anyone understand their finances. Teacher sponsor was Nadine Hecht.
Second place went to Mario Sagastume, Aaron Romero, Emanuel Nesibu and Moses Gabisi at Gaithersburg. Their idea was to recycle sneakers by cleaning and rebranding them so that more people have access to quality tennis shoes representing who they are. Teacher sponsor was Geoffrey Barron.
The Northwest team placed third with a business proposal focused on repurposing clothing or sentimental items into apparel that an individual would still be able to wear. The Northwest team included Maddie Kaplan, Aayush Thakkar, Jonah Karst and Zach Greenspan. Teacher sponsor was Kristin Vick.