Roanoke native Peter Coats (third from left) poses with other members of a case study team that competed at a recent Business Today conference held in New York City.

Peter Coats is now a member of one of the most prestigious clubs for college students.

The 2004 graduate of Hidden Valley High School is now a junior at Maryville College in Maryville, Tenn., majoring in international business. He just returned from an all-expense-paid, three-day conference in New York City. Coats was one of only 150 students invited to attend the 34th Annual Business Today International Conference, where he learned, collaborated and networked with some of the brightest students and business leaders in the world, including 60 CEOs and other executives.

"It was awesome," said Coats of the experience. "The students I met were really impressive -- real go-getters who all had a variety of different backgrounds. I met and talked with about 15 CEOs, too. All of it was quite remarkable."

Founded by Steve Forbes in 1968 at Princeton University, Business Today is a non-profit student organization committed to encouraging debate and dialogue between college students and business leaders. The non-profit supports conference seminars, a magazine and an online journal, all of which are run by Princeton students.

More than 1,100 college and university students from 17 countries applied for this year's international conference by sending in resumes and a 250-word essay on leadership. (The theme for the 2008 conference was "The Dynamics of Leadership: Transformation and Innovation in the 21st Century.")

The 150 students selected spent Nov. 23-25 at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. The conference included addresses by chief executive officers, chief financial officers and presidents of some of the country's major corporations, including Prudential Financial, Inc.; Avon Products; Universal Studios; NASA; and Starwood Hotels. Smaller sessions were led by executives from corporations such as Mitsubishi International, American Airlines, the Associated Press, Godiva Chocolatier, Morgan Stanley, Verizon and Coach Leatherworks.

Coats, the son of Kathryn Coats and the grandson of Dr. Ken Tuck and Sara Tuck, all of Roanoke, heard about the international conference while attending a Business Today regional conference held in Dallas last March. At the regional conference, he competed in an "elevator pitch" competition designed for students to present new business models and or products. There, he finished among the top participants. He believes that presentation gave him an advantage in being selected for the prestigious international conference.

With about 90 percent of students at the conference majoring in finance or economics, Coats said he was a minority. His international business major may have helped him "diversify" the conference a little bit, but he learned of something else on his application that gave him a leg up.

"Amit Mukherjee, the director of the conference, told me, 'Peter, it was your community service.' Being a Bonner Scholar, I do a lot more service than the average student, so it was interesting to learn that it gave me an edge over a lot of other applicants. For me, that was really cool."

(As a Bonner Scholar, Coats receives a scholarship to attend Maryville College in exchange for completing about 600 hours of volunteer work both during the school year and throughout the summer. Coats has volunteered in Mexico, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador.)

Much of students' time at the Business Today conference was spent working on case study projects.

Using his photography and graphic design skills, Coats was instrumental in the development of the corporation's new campaign, which was presented to Mike Pocalyko, founder and CEO of Monticello Capital, and other student judges from Princeton in the case study competition. He said he also believed he was able to contribute much to the discussion about how the corporation should exhibit ethical business practices because of his education at Maryville.

For more about Coats' experience, visit The Notebook on swo-co.com

-- Submitted by Karen B. Eldridge, director of news and public information, Maryville College