Senior Lauren Garbett is Gulliver Prep’s Silver Knight nominee in the area of Business. Garbett has a strong commitment to not only business but community service, with approximately 800 volunteer hours.
“Over the summer I taught with Breakthrough Miami. I taught an English class,” she says.
For the school year, she started business classes.
“The business program through Breakthrough didn’t exist and I thought it was needed so I started that,” she says.
The class teaches students skills things such as how to dress for interviews and how to give elevator pitches.
She says prospective employees need to learn how to condense everything about themselves into a concise one-to-two-minute speech that will sell themselves to a company.
“I was in charge of creating lesson plans for every grade,” she says, “Each grade will have two classes. I also recruit people to teach because I can’t teach all the classes.”
She loved creating the lessons, recruiting teachers and teaching the children.
“Part of the reason I wanted to teach the business classes was because how much I enjoyed the summer and how much I enjoyed teaching them,” Garbett says. “I didn’t want it to end.”
She was able to recruit teachers through her position as president of the Business Club. She’s also recruits two students who can take over when she leaves for college.
The Breakthrough sessions are twice a month. She does two lesson plans – one for the fifth and sixth grade students and the other for those in seventh and eighth grade.
As far as the Business Club goes, they are planning a career fair for the school.
“We have been in contact with Gulliver alumni who have businesses and we have them come in and speak,” she says. “We did this last year.”
Last year, the career fair was held in May but this year they are working on an early February event. They are also working with the Gulliver Alumni Association to bring in the business owning alumni.
“We set it up in the gym so each person gets their own booth,” she says. “Students can come in on their break and walk around.”
She’s expecting alumni ranging from doctors to surgeons to engineers. They even had a promoter one year who did numerous events in Miami.
The goal is to give students the opportunity to think of life beyond college.
Garbett was accepted early decision to Duke University. She’ll major in Public Policy and Economics with concentration in finance. Her plan is to attend law school and practice corporate law.
She’s interested in corporate law because of her family history.
“My mom’s parents are from Cuba, Santiago,” she says. “When Castro came to power they came here.”
He grandfather was a lawyer in Santiago but couldn’t practice law in the U.S.
“This brilliant man couldn’t reach his potential here,” she says.
Her community service includes being a peer health educator for the Health Information Project Club. She goes to freshman study halls and teaches them about health, drug use, and sex education.
“I had people teach me when I was a freshman,” she says. “I felt they made a huge difference. I felt it was important for me to continue that.”
She’s a member of the Open Ears, Open Arms club, a community service club that mostly holds drives.
Garbett is an artist. She’s been in the Gulliver art program four years and recently discovered the creativity of digital art. Before that, her favorite medium was charcoal and oil.
“My favorite things to draw are people,” she says.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
