Tuesday, April 22, 2025
For the first time in three years, Lawrence High School’s DECA club will be represented at the International Career Development Conference. Junior Nataly Gutierrez is the only member of Lawrence’s club that will take part in the competition in Orlando April 26 to 29.
DECA, formerly Distributive Education Clubs of America, prepares aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the world. More than 23,000 high school students, teacher-advisers, business professionals and alumni will gather at the conference next month.
Mark Albin, who taught STEM courses -— science, technology, engineering and math — at the high school before moving to Lawrence Elementary School, has been Lawrence’s DECA adviser for 20 years, and this will be his fifth appearance in Orlando. “We have qualified for 17 of my 20 years, but we’re coming off a three-year drought,” Albin wrote in an email. “I think coming off of Covid and my move to teaching at the elementary level gives me less access to the DECA students and contributed to our low numbers of competitors and success.”
Albin now teaches STEM at the elementary school.
The number of Lawrence High participants in New York DECA’s 65th annual State Career Conference earlier this month in Rochester was back up to double digits for the first time in seven years, he said. Gutierrez is the 48th student to qualify for the international conference in Albin’s years as club adviser.
She received an 86 on the qualifying exam, which was among the top 10 scores, and she placed fourth overall at the New York conference with a presentation in Hospitality and Tourism Professional Selling that focused on a hotel chain’s use of sustainable products.
“I am excited for Nataly as she gets a chance to compete against the very best,” Albin wrote. “She has the same expectations, but instead of competing against the best NY has to offer, you are now competing against the best the world has to offer.”
Lawrence High senior Danielle Domanas, the DECA club’s president, serves as a liaison between the club and Albin.
“As president, I make sure that everyone is on top of their work, and I’m always keeping in communication (with) our adviser,” Domanas said. “I’m making sure that the information he wants to be relayed is explained to everyone else.”
Domanas said she was extremely proud of Gutierrez for making it this far, and would help her in any way she could as she prepared.
“I was extremely surprised and shocked,” Gutierrez, who has only been a member of DECA for a year, said of qualifying for the international conference. “I always thought I wouldn’t make it to the international level, and I don’t even have that much experience doing it. I had wanted to join since freshman year, but didn’t have the time, and I’m so grateful that I finally did it.”
She is preparing for Orlando by focusing on the written exam that all competitors will take, because only the to scorers will qualify for the final rounds of competition.
“It’s highly competitive, so I’m focusing on studying everything that’s on the test and as well as my presentation,” Gutierrez added. “I’m working on giving the best presentation that I can.” She is also working on her communication and sales skills.
She is most looking forward to being around so many intelligent people, and enjoying all of the experiences being offered while she’s in Orlando.
“I’m super honored, happy and proud to represent Lawrence as a whole, because there were so many privileged and private schools there who have more money and experience, and being from here, I always felt like I couldn’t be in the same room as them,” Gutierrez said. “Everyone there was the epitome of professionalism and intelligent, and being there myself, I felt like I could embody what I was for my whole school.”
