“In Enactus, we create sustainable solutions for problems using business principles; where business meets humanitarian work,” said Kelsie Wright, current UVU Enactus president. “I worked on a project in Zambia and saw firsthand what Enactus did to change lives and empower people to see who they were. It wasn’t just taking someone food or helping them to build a house, but the project fundamentally changed their lives. Now they’re empowered to change their own lives.”
“Every year, there’s a national competition where teams present on the projects they did,” said Ben Park, vice president of UVU Enactus. “It’s to showcase what everyone’s done and to see the highest impact. If you win the national competition, then you go to the world competition. The national competition was held in Kansas City. Our goal every year is to win and represent the United States. We took second last year, and second again this year. It was an incredible experience!”
“Our project was in the Congo. We developed a solar-charging kiosk and a business model to go along with it to help alleviate poverty and provide electricity to people in the Congo. Something really unique to our project is that we partnered with the Congolese to help them develop value themselves so that they could expand and scale. I was the project manager of the Lean Manufacturing plant. As we got these kiosks up and running, we decided that we would need something to help protect intellectual property since the kiosks were being built out on the street. Our solution was to build a factory. We said, ‘Why not make it world-class and make a Lean manufacturing factory?’ Lean is an ideology, really a culture in business to ensure there’s no waste in anything you do and that it adds value to the customer. I worked with US Synthetic down the street because they’re a world leader in Lean.”
“The way the competition runs is there are tons of teams, and they’re split into one of 16 leagues,” explained Kelsie. “Within each league is six or seven teams, and only one team from each league moves on to the next round. Every team gives a 17-minute presentation with a video playing in the background to a panel of judges, with five minutes of Q&A afterward. The judges select the top three teams to move on to the next round, and that pattern continues until the final round, where the top four teams present on the big stage. It was so great to hear them say, ‘Progressing into the final round, Utah Valley University!’”
“There were 87 teams presenting this year, and it was pretty high stress but also a lot of fun and a great experience,” said Ben. “Barbara Barrington Jones comes and coaches us on our presentation skills. She’s been incredible, and we have great advisors—Professor Castle, Bill Neal, Vance Gough, they’ve really helped us out.”
“Preparing for the final competition is pretty wild,” said Kelsie. “We put together a presentation team and meet two to three times a week. The week before competition, we’re meeting for two hours every day to make our presentation perfect! I joined Enactus as a freshman—which was the first year it was organized here—and we didn’t even make it past the first round. I watched the final four and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I just want to be on that stage so bad.’ The experience this year was crazy because you walk up on this ginormous stage and stand before a ton of people. When you speak, it’s like talking into two phones, but you have to keep going. It was a surreal experience because it’s been one of my goals to make it on the final four stage.”
“The main criteria in the competition is how much impact your projects have. Watching BYU-Hawaii’s presentation—they obviously had the most impact. They worked with so many different countries and people; it was really neat to see. I always say I’m content to lose to a team that does more good than we do—I mean I’m still not really content, I definitely wish we would’ve won, and we definitely will in the next few years. If the impact is there and if you have the actual numbers of what you did, then it’s pretty easy to say who wins. Going into next year, we have a lot of really awesome projects, and we’re shifting the way that we present, so we’ll definitely have a powerful presentation.”
“The fact that we took second means that out of 460 Enactus teams in the U.S., our team had the second most impact in the world,” said Ben. “To put that into perspective, the team that won the world championship last year was from Canada, and their team had higher impact numbers towards the United Nations’ sustainability goals than the United Nations. It’s an amazing experience to be a part of Enactus and learn killer business and entrepreneurship skills, and do good.”
Members of the team often have the opportunity to interact with the various CEO’s and business leaders who comprise the judging panels. “One of the judges I talked to has a really successful yarn company out in Missouri,” said Kelsie, “and we talked about my company and what we do, and it was awesome because he gave me his business card and said, ‘We would love to collaborate, if you need any help just shoot me an email.’ It’s awesome to connect with these people, especially for someone who’s 22-years old trying to start a business. Having these awesome CEOs hand you their business card and say, ‘Let me know if you need anything,’ is a pretty neat experience. Just the networking that you get from it is pretty awesome, and there’s always an opportunity to see the CEO of Walmart.”
“Participating in Enactus completely elevated my university experience,” said Ben, “to where now I honestly feel like I can change the world and I have every intention of doing that. I think that’s the biggest takeaway from Enactus. It’s elevated what I think I can do and the connections I can make. This brings us into contact with people from all around the world and all around the nation. We have our differences, but there are so many good similarities that we all share. We’re all motivated by helping people.”
“We help a lot of people, and we change a lot of lives, but the person it helps the most is the student that’s involved,” said Kelsie. “They really get different perspectives, amazing opportunities to network, witness people’s lives change, and so much more. There aren’t many things you can do as an 18 to 24-year old that has this amount of impact. Enactus took my interests and helped me turn that into an actual career. That’s what I really want for our students: to become passionate about something and get involved in changing the world. I really want our students to understand what Enactus is because it does so many good things, and it has the capacity to change lives. Outside of winning competitions, we want to help our students and help the people that we’re working with.”
“You can come to school, get a degree, find a job, and be at it your whole life,” said Ben. “Or you can come to school and have your mind and soul expanded as you network with people from all over the world and help people solve problems. That’s what you’ll do through Enactus.”
