The JA Company Program Closes the School Year with Record Growth and Success!

Author: Tania Daniel
Entrepreneurship
Published: Wednesday, 23 Jun 2021

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Image caption: JA Board Members Announced the Competition Winners and Shared Valuable Insights with Students

The 2020/21 JA Company Program officially culminated yearly operations with our grand finale, the Virtual Banquet and Awards Ceremony, presented by JA Board Company, Ernst & Young. We are grateful to so many amazing stakeholders who helped us navigate a very challenging year to achieve great success. We are appreciative of our dedicated and passionate JA Board Members, mentors, educators and student leaders who attended our final special event for the program and cheered wholeheartedly for our JA startups. Congratulations to Dulicious Co. for winning the coveted Company of the Year 2021 Award and applause to all our 14 finalists who had a phenomenal year! JA Startups EVO and Go! Board tied for the 1st Runner Up Award, while Simply Co. won the 2nd Runner Up Award. We are also extremely proud of Xcel for winning the Distinguished Performance Award. Our JA startups were evaluated based on their annual reports (judged by Ernst & Young), commercials (scored by Fifth Ring) and leadership interviews (hosted by JA Board Member Alan Sikarskie from Bureau Veritas).

We are indebted to our JA Board Member Sandra Oliver for her steadfast support throughout the year and to Ernst & Young for serving as our esteemed event sponsor for the grand finale. Fellow JA Board Members, Niloufar Molavi from PwC, Alan Sikarskie from Bureau Veritas and Juliet Breeze, MD from Next Level Urgent Care also honored us with their presence and made the evening special by handing out key awards. A very special thanks to our LyondellBasell Board Member, Michael McMurray, for his unconditional guidance. The JA Company Program is privileged to have LyondellBasell serve as our Premier Presenting Sponsor and thanks to their generosity and support our outreach and impact has been incredible this past year. Our stakeholders Lia Johnson from JA Board Company Baker Hughes, Erika Jones from our Company of the Year Competition event sponsor Frost Bank, and Red Brodie and Jennifer Prince from JA Board Company Fifth Ring also graced our event. Our alumni ambassador Alyssa Le, from The University of Texas, joined us to celebrate a year of many achievements and delivered the closing address! As we look towards 2021/22, we are excited to see so much potential for growth and remain thankful to the strong support system that the JA Company Program has built.