Next school year, Coral Gables High School rising senior Nicole De Barros will be the president of the Academy of Finance and senior class treasurer. This year she was the junior class treasurer and president of the academy.
“One of the requirements of the academy is an internship so we do a lot of networking with businesses to make sure all the students have internships,” she said.
De Barros also manages the Gables wrestling team.
“As a manager, I help out at practice; I do their calendar, attendance, and field trip forms — all the paper work,” she said. “And take scores when they have a match.”
Although being manager takes up a lot of her time, she is active in Interact, a community service club sponsored by Rotary, and this past year she had two board positions with the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). She was a member of the board of operations
which took care of field trip forms for competitions and she was on the Community Service Committee.
De Barros also competed in the Business Ethics category.
“It’s a performance competition,” she said. “They give me a topic and I have to solve the problem and give my views on it.”
Next year she plans to compete again in Business Ethics for FBLA.
She also earns community service hours by collecting supplies for a homeless shelter and a pet shelter in her apartment building.
“I talked to my manager and asked for permission, and I would talk to my neighbors to see if they would help out,” she said. “I make flyers. Downstairs, where we have the mail, people drop it off.”
The collection drives last a week after which the manager drops off the donations at the shelters.
In college, De Barros plans to major in business — probably in finance. Her top three college choices are FIU, FSU and the University of Miami.
— Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
