Article Text
Fairfax County Public Schools students earned two first-place awards and multiple other top-15 finishes at the 2026 Future Business Leaders of America National Leadership Conference, held June 29 through July 2 in San Antonio, Texas.
Students from six FCPS schools were recognized as winners or finalists in 13 business-related event categories, according to the school division’s July 8 announcement.
Chantilly High School student Ishaan Shukla won first place in Public Administration and Management. Sahas Reddy of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology also earned a first-place award, winning Computer Problem Solving.
Thomas Jefferson students recorded several additional high finishes. Michael Mafanire placed second in Journalism, while Namay Khandelwal placed sixth in International Business. Vishruth Nadikattu placed sixth in Project Management, and Arpan Prasai placed ninth in Network Design. Sravya Gogineni, Akshayasri Lokam and Harini Sudhakar placed 10th in Visual Design.
Robinson Secondary School students placed in three technology events. Taylor Lindenberg and Valeria Morales placed fifth in Mobile Application Development. Dwij Bhensdadia, Ian Caballero and Javier Caballero placed sixth in Computer Game and Simulation Programming. Abigail Bruechert placed seventh in Technology Support and Services.
Falls Church High School student Josephine Huynh placed fourth in Introduction to Retail and Merchandising. Krish Mathuria of Rocky Run Middle School was a finalist in Exploring Management and Entrepreneurship. Centreville High School students Eric Kim, Joshua Park and Himadrin Senthil Kumar were finalists in Digital Video Production.
The national conference brought together more than 16,000 middle and high school students, educators and volunteers from across the United States. More than 13,400 students from nearly 2,100 schools across 47 U.S. states, territories and Canada competed in 108 business-related events.
Competitors pursued nearly $65,000 in cash prizes, and the conference offered more than 200 educational workshops.
FBLA describes itself as a nonprofit education association serving more than 200,000 middle school, high school and college members worldwide. The FCPS announcement connected the students’ participation to Goal 2 of the school division’s 2023-30 Strategic Plan.