High school accounting students win for TV pitches

A team of students from Batavia High School in Batavia, Ill., won the 2013 Project Innovation: The Start Here, Go Places. Competition of Creative Excellence. The competition was sponsored by Start Here, Go Places., the AICPA’s interactive website for high school and community college students interested in exploring an accounting career.

The winning team, named Accounting Pros, received $4,000 in scholarships and $3,000 in grant money for the school. The team’s members were David Madrigal, Stanley Walden, and Zach Thilges, with Jeffrey Miller serving as faculty adviser.

The competition challenged high school students to develop a hit TV show focused on the accounting profession. Teams of two to four students created concepts for a show, developing a proposal, production budget, and short video preview to pitch to a network (a panel of judges appointed by the AICPA, who chose the finalists). The finalists’ videos were submitted to a public vote on the website, and a final round of judging chose the top finishers.

Accounting Pros’s show features Dominic, a young SEC agent with his CPA license, who lands a position with the FBI after exposing fraudulent activity at a toy company. In his role at the FBI, Dominic goes undercover to expose white collar crimes as a forensic accountant while secretly investigating the agency’s financial history.

The second-place team, from Pine Ridge High School in Deltona, Fla., received $3,000 in scholarships and $2,000 for the school. And the third-place team, from Foxborough High School in Foxborough, Mass., received $2,000 in scholarships and $1,000 for the school.

For more information on the winners and to watch their pilots, go to tinyurl.com/cy8vwvk.