Land of Lincoln CEO tradeshow puts the icing on the cake of a challenging yet good year
Part four: Young entrepreneurs Alena Reed, Ty Qualters and Marilyn McGill

 

[May 06, 2021]  The final three students participating in the Land of Lincoln CEO tradeshow Wednesday night were Alena Reed, Ty Qualters and Marilyn McGill.

Alena Reed



Alena Reed (left) along with her friend and former CEO student Annagrace Keller were manning Alena’s boutique ‘Wild & Free.’ Reed is building a business selling women’s clothing and accessories. She offers clothing from size small to the harder to find XXXL. All her designs are trendy and fashionable for today’s market.

Reed says that Wild & Free is her future and Lincoln will be her home for building her business into a successful brick and mortar store. Her plan is to attend college and focus her education on Marketing as well as graphic design. She would then like to return home to Lincoln and work to build her business with a location hopefully in the downtown area.

Reed is a junior at Lincoln Community High School. She said that the best lesson that she has learned is that she needs to make connections in her community because “each person you meet throughout your life can help you in some way.”

Ty Qualters



Ty Qualters was at his booth talking about his business named, ‘adequIT.’ In his business he will assist clients with their technology needs. He said that his booth was generating a lot of interest and he is hopeful that he will gain some new clients.
 

Ty is a senior at Lincoln Community High School. He said he enrolled in the CEO program at the recommendation of two CEO students from years past, Moriah Prather and Eli Hewitt. Both had told him that he would enjoy the class and would gain knowledge and experience that would be valuable in the implement of his future goals regardless of what they might be.

Ty is interested in staying in the technology field and plans to attend college with his studies focusing on cybersecurity and technology.

Marilyn McGill



Marilyn McGill is a senior at Hartsburg-Emden High School. She is also a member of the Hartem Stags Volleyball and she is part of the Hartem FFA Chapter. Her future plans include attending college where she will study Agriculture Business.

McGill noted that she joined the CEO class because she wanted to learn more about how businesses are run and she felt that she would pick up some “real life skills” that are not normally taught in high school.

For her CEO business project, Marilyn developed Marketing by Marilyn. The focus is to help businesses utilize social media as a marketing tool.

The services she offers to her clients includes visiting their businesses, taking photos of points of interest and posting information about the business on their social media pages.

Throughout the evening guests visited with the students, hearing their pitches and often times placing orders for products and services, or made purchases of merchandise offered at the booth.

For the students the CEO experience now comes to an end. The program which is designed to run within the school year ends with the tradeshow. And it was a good end indeed.

[Nila Smith]

[Text from file received from ]