Ted Rogers MBA team ties for top spot at women’s leadership case competition
Congratulations to the Ted Rogers MBA team for tying for first place at the Reimagining Women in Leadership MBA Case Competition.
The competition was part of the Reimagining Women in Leadership: Virtual MBA Conference & Case Competition event hosted by the Ted Rogers MBA program in collaboration with the student-run Women in Leadership Association (external link) (WiLA). The event, which took place over Zoom March 5-6, 2021, was tied to International Women’s Day (March 8) and brought together students from diverse backgrounds in North American MBA programs to exchange ideas on socially relevant business issues and topics related to women in leadership.
The case competition for the event, sponsored by Interac Corp., explored digital disruption, data privacy and business/government/consumer relationships through open banking. Since North America lags behind Asia, Europe and Australia in open banking, the goal of the case challenge was to advance practices in this area by starting a conversation amongst MBA students.
The case was released to teams two weeks prior to the event, and each team had 20 minutes to present their solution to the challenge to a panel of industry judges, in addition to a 10 minute Q&A.
"The case study on open banking took participants out of their comfort zone because the topic is important, but unconventional,” says Dr. Donna Smith, Director of the Ted Rogers MBA program. “Students did considerable research and preparation for it and commented that they felt empowered and highly accomplished having learned about the complexities of open banking."
A total of 13 teams competed in the case challenge. The Ted Rogers MBA team made up of Dani Gomez Ortega, Yudi Li, Muhammad Maqsud Hussain and Caitlin Campbell tied for first place with the Asper School of Business (University of Manitoba) at the competition. The first place prize for the MBA students was a 12-month 1:1 Mentorship program with a focus on enhancing board governance knowledge and access through Women in Governance (external link, opens in new window) , an organization with a global reach.
Another team from the Ted Rogers MBA program, made up of Shelby Aggiss-Norton, Thabisha Mahamood, Sagarika Ramayanam and Genti Dhamko, also participated in the case competition and reached the final four.
The conference part of the Reimagining Women in Leadership event gave MBA students the opportunity to hear from keynote speakers Alifia Doriwala (Managing Director and Partner, RockCreek) in conversation with Rhiannon Rosalind (CEO and Owner, The Economic Club of Canada) and Caroline Codsi (President and Founder, Women in Governance). Dr. Smith and Codsi penned an Op-Ed for the Toronto Star called “The corporate world must act now on leadership roles for Canadian women in business — the time for patience is gone” (external link, opens in new window) for International Women’s Day.
The conference also allowed students to network with their peers and industry leaders, and participate in four workshops.
"I enjoyed meeting MBA students from different schools,” says Dr. Smith. “One thing was clear: they craved content on wellbeing and on a holistic perspective of the working woman. Whether we are in COVID-19 mode or not, it is important to take care of oneself in order to lead others, effectively."
