Fellow business honors students, Ben Miller and William Tabrizi, didn’t know they would have much in common when they signed a lease to live together last year. Only a year apart in age, Tabrizi was an accounting major from Vernon Hills, Ill., and Miller was a double major in supply-chain management and informations systems and information technology from Boody, Ill.

However, Miller and Tabrizi now share prestigious recognition state-wide. Following Tabrizi being named Lincoln Laureate in 2012, Miller has also been chosen for this honor to represent the University for 2013.

“I didn’t really think I would win,” Miller said after receiving the news in October. “Every college nominates someone and there’s a lot of really talented people at the University.”

Every year, university colleges across the state nominate a notable senior student. The Lincoln Academy then chooses a student to represent each school as Lincoln Laureate.

“The Academy honors one senior student from every four-year, degree granting institution in the state,” said Julie Kellner, executive director of the Academy. “Students are selected based on academic and extracurricular achievement.”

John Hedeman, the creator and former assistant dean for the college of business honors program, happened to nominate both of the University’s Lincoln Laureate winners two years in a row. Although nominations for the award were due in September, Hedeman made sure to submit Miller’s nomination before he retired as dean in June.

“The more I looked at Ben’s contributions I realized that he would be a great nominee,” Hedeman said. “Ben stands out because he is motivated to take advantage of the resources offered by the College of Business and the University of Illinois. He has amazing energy and outstanding leadership skills. The combination of these skills allowed him to make an incredibly positive impact on campus.”

The Academy considers many factors when naming the Laureates every year, which include the student’s GPA as well as his or her student, community and global impact.

After arriving in the business honors program his freshman year, Miller has continually applied himself to many extracurricular activities.

He joined the business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi in his second semester of freshman year, and he said its mentor program guided him the most in his academic achievements. He joined OTCR Consulting, an entirely student-run consulting firm, in his junior year, for which he now works as a project manager.

However, Miller finds his most beneficial experience was working with a group called Enactus — previously known as Students in Free Enterprise — a group that fuses entrepreneurship skills with community and global impact.

He joined as a project manager during his freshman year when the organization had eight members and two projects. Since then, Miller has helped build Enactus from the ground up, acting as vice-president internal his sophomore year and then as president his junior year. Now, Enactus consists of 60 members and eight projects, three of which are international.

“I definitely think that (Enactus) played a really big role in my ability to win the Lincoln Laureate,” Miller said. “It’s helped me learn how my leadership style works.”

The most memorable experience Miller had working with Enactus was the “Uganda Project,” which he oversaw last year to create an “entrepreneurship curriculum” for small business owners and farmers in Kapeeka, Uganda. For two weeks last May, Miller and five other Enactus members traveled to a rural village in Kapeeka to teach the curriculum and receive feedback on their work.

“That was literary a life-changing experience,” he said.

Miller attributes most of his success to the business school’s ability to allow students to balance academic and extracurricular responsibilities. Classes provide the theoretical knowledge, Miller said, but extracurricular work gives students experience in real-world application. Still, Miller admitted that the business school challenges students and that a drive for ambition and time management is essential to success.

“I get bored really quickly,” Miller said with a laugh. “But you have to be very good at managing your time and having a calendar.”

With his experience in OTCR Consulting and Enactus, Miller went on to intern for The Boeing Company, an aerospace organization based in Seattle, Wash., the summer after his sophomore year and then for Deloitte Consulting the summer after. At the end of his internship, Miller agreed to return to Deloitte full-time next September.

Miller said his origins from Boody, Ill., a town of less than 300 people, that keeps him humble. The encouragement of his family also helped him pursue his ambitions. He said his family’s reactions on the day he found out he got into business honors reminds him why he works so hard.

“The first thing (my family) said when they found out was ‘That’s awesome, congratulations Ben. Just remember God gave this to you, God can take it away just like that,’” Miller said. “‘So I’ve always went back to that, that moment, whenever something hard came up in college. That kind of keeps driving me, I guess. That moment right there when they said, ‘That’s awesome, Ben, congratulations. But you can do more. This is just the beginning.’”

In future years, Miller plans to earn his MBA in between working for consulting firms. Ultimately, though, he wants to pursue a career within the aerospace industry.

Miller and the others honored this year attended a special ceremony last Saturday in the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. There, the student Lincoln Laureates were presented with a Lincoln Academy Medallion and a financial award. Hedeman was unable to attend the ceremony with Miller, but said he was very proud and happy for him.

“Ben represents the best of his class, his college and his university,” Hedeman said.

Sarah can be reached at [email protected].