Nicole Aimone, Editor-in-Chief
River Valley High School Sophomore Kylie Morrey was a runner up for a cash prize at the University
of Wisconsin-Whitewater Midwest High School pitch competition earlier this month.
Morrey was one of 15 students to participate in the annual “Shark Tank” style business pitch with teams from high schools throughout Wisconsin and Illinois. The teams have six minutes to pitch their start-up idea, and five minutes for a question and answer period with the judges, that includes members of the UW-Whitewater Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO), who also organizes the event.
The contestants compete for a cash prizes of $2,000, $1,000 and $500 and gain feedback on their business ideas and pitches, this year’s event was held via Webex.
According to the UW-Whitewater CEO website, the pitch contest was created in 2017 to “is to help foster creativity, innovation, and a solution-orientation within high school students and provide them the practical skills of business model development and professional presentation skills”.
Morrey competed with students from Aurora, Illinois, Barrington Illinois, Wilmette Illinois, Fort Atkinson Wisconsin, Menasha Wisconsin.
A team from the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA) in Aurora, Illinois won the first place prize of $2,000, with Solidify, a chemical compound to prevent the impact of acid rain on concrete.
The student from Fort Atkinson took home the second place $1,000 prize with a pitch titled Heated Hoodie. Another team from IMSA won the third place $500 cash prize for their pitch titled Contrush.
Students from Willmette and Barrington Illinois took home fourth and fifth place, respectively.
Morrey was joined with the student from Menasha as a runner up.