Two Greek high school students—Eleni Karakasidou, from Kalamaria, Thessaloniki, and Kyriaki Petsa, from Petroupoli, Attica—have achieved an incredible feat: they have become World Champions in the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship, winning first place in PowerPoint and second place in Word, respectively. Eleni won the gold medal in her category, while Kyriaki earned the silver.

The two students represented Greece at the annual Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship, which was held in Florida, USA. The results were announced today at 7 PM Greek time, and the two girls celebrated their remarkable victory. It is the first time that two Greek female students—and in fact digital classmates—have taken the top two spots in the global competition.

They traveled together to the U.S., accompanied by Georgia Marousiadou, a teacher from Kavala who trained Kyriaki Petsa. Eleni was coached by Panagiotis Aslanidis.

Their journey began when they won the national qualifying competition held in Athens this past spring. Although separated by 500 kilometers, the two high schoolers became close friends after meeting three years ago via Zoom, in scholarship classes offered by ExpertIN, a computer learning center based in Kavala.

The Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship is an international competition now in its 24th consecutive year, evaluating student skills in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It is open to participants aged 13 to 22, from over 140 countries around the world.