The 2026 International Career Development Conference (ICDC) was held in Atlanta. ICDC is an international competition for DECA to showcase all the hard work students have practiced in the business field.
Junior Charlotte McClanahan won international finalist in integrated marketing campaign event. McClanahan said she enjoyed the experience and perspective that ICDC brought her.
“I loved getting to meet people from across the world and network with them,” McClanahan said. “ICDC really puts into perspective the scale of DECA”
ICDC is filled with many different opportunities and offers different types of skills to learn from throughout your time at the competition.
Junior Scarlett Loehr is grateful for the new idea of what business is.
“It showed me how many different things there are underneath the idea of business, there’s so many different categories of things to pursue so that’s really interesting,” Loehr said.
Amber Brantner, the sponsor for DECA, said she loved how she got to see the growth of the students that participated in DECA, especially from the students who had never been to the international competition before.
“Its exciting to see how much students have grown from joining DECA from the first time to working hard and getting to a place where they get to compete at an international level,” Brantner said. “It’s hard to describe the level of achievement that they’ve reached even just being able to attend.”
