King High Student Receives National FBLA Award

Speaking in front of large crowds might scare most people, but it fuels Neil Kamath, an 11th-grader at .

“Getting in front of a crowd and speaking is almost exhilarating when you can see everyone’s faces and see how they are going to react to certain words and inflex in your voice,” Kamath said. “If you can train yourself to respond in such a way to your audience members, it is an amazing experience.”

Last year, the 17-year-old joined the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), hoping to gain more experience in the field of public speaking.

“I love the business perspective (FBLA) brings, and I also saw the public speaking category,” he said. “It is pure public speaking where other clubs don’t offer that.”

Kamath said he has been participating in speech competitions since he was in fourth grade. Over the summer, he had the chance to participate in the FBLA-Phi Beta Lambda (FBLA-PBL) National Leadership conference in Orlando. There, he competed against other students in the Public Speaking I category.

He earned the trip to the national conference because he placed first in both the division and state tournaments.

“From a big national competition, you can see how you relate to people from all over the nation, it’s all walks of life,” he said. “You are competing with the first- and second-placing people from every single state and a few international students as well.

“In the preliminaries, you are sitting with all of the kids in your competition before you go in, and you can learn what they did to prepare for their speeches, where they come from, what kind of high school dynamics they have. Its really great to compare yourself with these people who have the same passion.”

Kamath received third place in the Public Speaking category at the national competition and said even he was surprised that he placed that high at the national level, especially since it was his first year in FBLA.

“That was probably one of the best experiences in my entire life,” he said. “As you are on stage, there’s thousands of people in the audience, and I see my mom and my dad, my dad videotaping. ... As the names went by I was thinking, 'Wow, these kids are top 10 in the nation,' and the names were going by so fast.”

Kamath’s mom, Sharmila, said the minute her son’s name was called, she forgot about everything else.

“I was in charge of taking the pictures and when they called his name, I could only think about how happy I was for him,” she said.

For the competition, Kamath had to base his speech on one of the nine FBLA goals. He chose competent and aggressive business leadership as his topic.

“That’s the one that I thought was the most important,” he said.

Kamath said he got the idea from an experience he had while fundraising for another club at school. He was raising money for his Relay for Life team and tried to find a sponsor for Indian food. He had a difficult time finding a sponsor, and the experience helped him find a speech topic at the competitions.

“That experience really spoke to me as what you can do in a business perspective to get people on your side, to work together, and how that can relate to competent and aggressive business leadership.”

Kamath said he is looking forward to his second year as a member of FBLA. He is also a member of the Debate Team and holds an officer position in the Key Club and the Red Cross Club at King High.