Five WUSTL students win Executive Leadership Council essay competition

The Executive Leadership Council (ELC) and its foundation named five students from Washington University in St. Louis as winners of its national 2012 business essay competition.

They are:

• Justin Nicks, senior in business
• Aloysius Ononye, MBA student
• Jonathan D. Jackson, senior in political science in Arts & Sciences
• Nneka Onwuzurike, junior in marketing and entrepreneurship
• Gabrielle Cazeau, junior in chemical engineering

The ELC competition provides 10 scholarships and mentoring opportunities to undergraduate students who write award-winning essays on an assigned business topic. Winners also take part in weeklong honors symposiums in New York City and Washington, D.C. The symposiums include council members and senior corporate executives at companies such as American Express Co., AXA Financial, Citigroup Inc., Booz Allen Hamilton, MTV Networks Co. and Sony Corp.

More than 100 students have won scholarships since the program’s founding in 1995, and more than 3,000 students have participated in the competition overall.

The ELC is a nonprofit organization founded in 1986. It represents African-American CEOs and senior executives at Fortune 500 and equivalent companies. The ELC has worked to build an inclusive business leadership pipeline and to empower African-American corporate leaders to make significant contributions in the global marketplace and their communities.