Vladan Napijalo, a senior from Portland High School and Evan Gilbert, a junior at Bonny Eagle High School had one week to form the partnership that would win the 2026 Junior Achievement Titan championship for southern Maine.
The Westbrook Regional Vocational Center students took the title in the simulated business-building competition — and are heading to the nationals in Boston in June — with a winning combination of grit, skill and trust in each other’s talents.
“We work well together,” said Napijalo, 18, a senior at Portland High School. “We push each other out of our comfort zones and we trust each other.”
Napijalo and Gilbert are among nearly 400 students from 34 high schools across Maine who participated in this year’s JA Titan Challenge. Nearly 170 business mentors helped to prepare and support 149 teams who engaged in the fast-paced online competition in real time.
Working on laptops, the students acted as CEOs of a cellphone startup — developing a product, conducting market research, establishing a production line and setting a price that hopefully would sell.
“You don’t want to set it too low because no one will want to buy it because they think it’s too cheap and your profit margin will be too low,” Napijalo said.
“You don’t want to set it too high because people will think it’s too expensive and you’ll be left with unsold inventory.”
“It’s about finding a balance,” said Gilbert, 17, a junior at Bonny Eagle High School in Standish. “It’s just like in real life.”
Typically, teams start with a budget of $1 million to $2 million, Gilbert said.
“You think it’s a lot, but to build a new lab it’s $400,000, to build a new marketing branch is $300,000 and to build a new factory is $500,000, so the money starts going away pretty quickly,” he said.
Throughout several quarters or rounds, the teams must adjust their business strategy and adapt to shifting market conditions. They may hire more workers, add features to their phones or build a new facility. In the end, the winning team has the most coins, representing categories such as production, research and development and corporate social responsibility.
Napijalo and Gilbert won 83 of 88 possible coins, falling a bit short on R&D, they said.
