Loyal High student wins statewide financial essay contest
When Olivia Piller took a class last fall in investing at the Loyal High School, she and the other students were posed a multipronged question: How have they adapted to a change in their lives? How has a publicly traded company adapted to change? And how could that company’s stock be combined with other stocks, bonds or mutual funds to create a successful longterm portfolio? Piller’s answer to that question just earned her first place in the Wisconsin SIFMA Foundation’s Fall 2020 National InvestWrite Essay Competition.
Piller was surprised with news on her achievement during a special presentation made on April 12. Surrounded by her peers and family, Piller accepted the award from her high school financial literacy teacher Jessica Zarnke, which included a medal, certificate and $100.
“I was very surprised,” said Piller on receiving the award. “I knew there was an awards thing for today, but when I saw my parents in the crowd, I knew something was up.”
Even before Piller first entered the investing class last fall, the groundwork was being laid to provide her, and other students at Loyal, opportunities like these. Back in late 2017, the Loyal School District received a $1 million financial literacy endowment from former Loyal resident Dr. Eldon Hill. With the interest funds from that endowment, the school was able to form a financial literacy department that became a full-time program at the school in the 2018-19 school year.
“Dr. Eldon Hill established a fund for something he cared about,” said Sue Bornick, the executive director of the Eau Claire Community Foundation, which is responsible for the endowment. “He established the Draper Hills Endowment. It supports the K-12 financial literacy program, and it has impacted more than 550 students and inspired innovative ways for them to do financial literacy in school.”
Once the financial literacy department was established, steps were taken by the Loyal School Board to make the program grow. One of these decisions made by the Board, Bornick said, was the approval of an elective class on financial investing for seniors. It was in that class that Piller was given her chance.
In the financial investing class, Jessica Zarnke taught seven seniors this year about ways they can save and grow their finances after they graduate. To make sure they truly grasped the concepts they were taught, Zarnke had the students take part in the Stock Market Game, a program that is run by the SIFMA Foundation for Investor Education. At the end of the game, the students take part in a final project: the SIFMA InvestWrite Essay Competition.
“I had the class for one quarter,” said Piller. “I was kind of interested in it, and it was also kind of a class to fill my schedule. (When I wrote the essay) I didn’t think it was going to get anything, wouldn’t have made an impact.”
As it turns out, Piller’s essay did have an impact. In the first part of her essay, she penned her experiences with getting and quitting her first job, the struggles of the job and the search afterwards, and how it all taught her patience and balance in work and personal life.
“One of the big challenges that I have had to overcome in the last year is finding and quitting a job and balancing schoolwork with personal life,” she wrote in her essay. “I have also had to learn that it is okay to be let down from something that you want that you didn’t get. During the time that I did not have a job I was applying to many places. I started the job search early after I quit my other job, but it took much longer than I thought … That situation proved and opened my eyes to realize that good things take time, and everything happens for a reason, especially when you least expect it to.”
The rest of her essay took what she learned in the investing class to show how the company Netflix adapted to change. Using statistics to show how the entertainment industry has changed, Piller also wrote about how to improve the company and increase its revenue and subscriber base.
“In 2019, about 21.9 million American households canceled their cable services,” she wrote at the end of her essay. “That number in 2019 wasn’t expected to be reached by 2023. In addition to Netflix, I would combine bonds for a long-term successful portfolio. Doing this could help the company to burn cash and accept a negative free cash flow to keep subscribers with new content that they like.”
After she graduates at the end of the year, Piller said she plans to attend UWStevens Point to become an elementary teacher.
CHEYENNE THOMAS/STAFF PHOTO
