My NHBC Experience: Unique

Hi everyone, my name is John Voudouris, and I am a Year 10 student at Upper Canada College in Toronto. The lessons that I learned at NHBC were truly invaluable and they allowed me to better understand the opportunities that becoming a CPA creates. The Forensic Accountant was extremely engaging, and I learned that being an accountant goes way beyond just numbers, but actually includes investigating crimes, money transfers and much more. Later on, I was able to actually apply my learnings to the Case Competition, where we investigated suspects for monetary fraud, similar to that the Forensic Accountant does. I believe that my group worked really well together, and we were able to succinctly analyze the situation at hand and come up with plausible verdicts. In addition, I learned about the ways to mitigate emotional and mental stressors, including the muscles known as sages and saboteurs and how to deal with these feelings. Overall, this will be very beneficial in future interactions and my business pursuits.

Below, you can see me presenting to the conference about our Illuminate Challenge. With my group, we were able to parter with the DECA club at UCC and promote Illuminate events. This is going to be a long-term partnership, and we will be working very closely with DECA next year to stimulate more involvement from UCC students in Illuminate events throughout the year. We will be particularly focusing on events during the second half of the year, as DECA events normally take place during the first half, leaving plenty of time for members to focus on Illuminate events. I am very grateful for the opportunity that NHBC has given me, and I am excited for future conferences with Illuminate.

I would like to extend a huge thank you to the Co-Chairs and the entire Illuminate Team for planning and executing such an interesting conference. It is truly inspirational and I hope that I will be able to participate in many future Illuminate events.