On April 16, students from various high schools attended Harker BEcon, Harker’s annual business and entrepreneurship conference. Throughout this two-day event, more than 100 students attended four events: a keynote speaker, two sets of workshops, a mentor panel and sHarker Tank.

The conference kicked off with Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, who based his keynote talk around responses to students’ pre-submitted questions about a variety of topics including his journey to creating Nvidia. His valuable insight and inspirational ideas taught students to value failure, learning and the journey rather than success. Afterward, students attended various workshops led by industry professionals on topics ranging from behavioral finance to strategies for creating sales pitches. 

On the second day, there was another round of workshops, including financial literacy for teens. Next, students were divided into over a dozen virtual rooms and were given the opportunity to have close discussions with seasoned professionals in various industries, such as gaming, biotechnology, social media and more!

Finally, teams of Harker’s own student entrepreneurs competed to receive $1,000 of funding and the chance to pitch their businesses to real venture capital firms as an opportunity to receive even more funding. The competitors included GetWellSoon, TogaTech, H200t, SlimeeCoffee and Explere. Out of the five competitors, junior Arnav Gupta’s GetWellSoon, an expansive database pairing clinical trials with patients, placed first, and freshman Kabir Ramzan’s TogaTech, a digital privacy company, placed second.

With many students expressing very positive sentiments about their experience, BEcon successfully wrapped up its first-ever virtual conference.