Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar recognized the achievements of Carson High School marketing and Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) students Monday for the successful creation and launch of Entrepreneurs in Action, a student-led business magazine celebrating local innovation and entrepreneurship.
“Every strong state has a strong economy, and that economy starts with small business and entrepreneurs,” Secretary Aguilar said of the student-driven initiative following his conversations at the school. “We have some of the youngest entrepreneurs here in the state building and developing something, and that execution is a skill we want to have with Nevadans for our future.”
Championing their efforts, he told students to continue to step up and seize possibilities put in front of them.
“Being engaged from a business perspective at such a young age is going to build a skill set that is going to propel you amongst your peers and put you in positions of opportunities,” he said. “Run with them. Entrepreneurship is that key. Be creative. We need young people to be engaged and to create things that we are not even thinking about. Those things (that) make society better. When I saw all this, I thought ‘this is a true effort.’ The time you took to do this was pretty impressive.”
With assistance, guidance and coaching from advisors, student teams interviewed local business leaders and entrepreneurs to craft compelling, magazine-quality articles. Students also sold all the advertisements, ensuring the magazine was self-supported and delivered a profit exclusively for student use. This process helped build recognition for student efforts and showcased their talents.
CHS Senior McKenzie Merrell, president of Carson High Future Business Leaders of America, said the experience has been astounding given more than 100 meetings that happened in the span of a few weeks for the magazine, leading up to the culmination of the project being unveiled to the Carson City community April 10.
“It is awesome to see our magazine — that we were just trying to make sure FBLA had enough funding to keep our program going — turned into this huge thing that is being recognized not only by our own community that we were trying to highlight but the state of Nevada as a whole,” she said.
The project was guided by Carson High educators Angila Golik and Cody Downing, with support from local business leaders including Jenny Treece of Carson Now and retired entrepreneur Jon Rogers. Together, they mentored students in journalism, marketing, sales and business management.
The magazine is being distributed at no cost among various business and locations throughout the greater Carson City area. It is also available in a digital format and shareable link here.
