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CBA Students Having a BLAST!

In March, 60 student leaders from 13 CBA student organizations took part in Business Leaders Annual Strategic Training (BLAST), hosted by CBA’s Office of Leadership Development (LD). BLAST is a four-day training program designed to prepare student organization leaders for the following academic year. 

Student leaders developed business plans for their respective organizations and prepared presentations that were made to CBA’s corporate partners following the program. The presentations were designed to obtain sponsorship from corporations as well as to propose strategic activities on which the organizations and corporations could partner.

Participating companies included American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus (Aflac);  ALDI, Inc.; Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; Deloitte; DICK’s Sporting Goods; Ernst & Young; FedEx; Ford Motor Company; GlaxoSmithKline; KPMG International; PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.; PricewaterhouseCoopers; and Waddell & Reed, Inc.

According to LeeAnn Falcon, LD Events Manager, the program had many highlights.  She sited networking opportunities in particular as one of BLAST’s major advantages and commended the student leaders on the quality of their presentations. “I was very impressed by the networking that took place after the presentations were completed,” Falcon said. “People stuck around afterward for a long time and were talking and enjoying themselves.  I was amazed by the efforts of the freshmen too.  Some of them had never presented before and they had to speak before CBA administrators and faculty as well as corporate representatives.  They did a great job!”

Many corporate representatives in attendance remarked about the value of networking with top CBA students.