Lazaridis School students once again show they are leaders of tomorrow

May 1, 2017

The Lazaridis School of Business & Economics has a lot to celebrate as winter term wraps up. From Toronto to Burlington, Vermont; Ottawa to Spain, Lazaridis School students had another successful winter term following its many case competition victories in Canada and internationally.

DECA Laurier dominated again this year at the DECA U Provincials in Toronto. The 107-student delegate team won 37 medals and awards, claiming the Highest Awarded Chapter title for the second consecutive year. The team was also awarded first place in the Advertising Campaign Challenge, eight top three finishes and fourth-year BBA student Nandani Seth was named the first ever Delegate of the Year.

Undergraduate students Triet Nguyen, Sarah Scott and Schanuj Sivapuniyam along with assistant coach Chandni Patel brought home the win in the University of Vermont 2017 Family Enterprise Case Competition. This recent success adds to the Lazaridis School's second and third place finishes and four best presenter awards in the past five years of the competition.

For the second year in a row, the Lazaridis School – with a team consisting of students Rehan Arain, Salman-Hussein Hasham, Filip Lup, Patrick Matthews and Areeb Yazdani – was one of five universities chosen from 24 to compete in the finals of the Bank of Canada's 2016/17 Governor’s Challenge.

At JDC Central 2017, the Lazaridis School team came in first in Charity Dollars Raised ($39,295), Entrepreneurship, Debate and Social; second in Participation & Engagement, and Sports (Ultimate); third in Human Resources and Finance; and third for School of the Year.

Following our second year competing at the University of Navarra International Case Competition in Spain, a group of Lazaridis students tied for first place in their division, surpassing the Chinese University of Honk Kong, Concordia and the University of Meunster.

At the Enactus Regional Competition, the Lazaridis School team received second place in the Eco-Living category for social enterprises Pollination and Shredded, and third place in the Youth Empowerment category for enterprises Kickstart and Mighty Hawks. Co-President Angy Jiang was awarded the HSBC Woman Leader of Tomorrow Award.

However, this success isn’t limited to competitions with other schools. The Lazaridis School has also had plenty of displays of student excellence on campus.

Lazaridis School students Patrick Gleason, Spencer Wiseman and Gary Lazemetaj came first in the second annual Inter-University Case Competition (IUCC) organized by Sports Management Laurier and Laurier Marketing Association, and sponsored by Henkel Canada and Prism Resources.

For the first time ever, first-year BU121 students had the opportunity to propose a social enterprise to address one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The top 97 ideas were then divided into 21 teams to participate in the Unilever Social Enterprise Competition. Liam Dotchison, Peter Hull, Emily Kinsey, John McCart and Ryan Murphy won over the Laurier alumni judges from Unilever and Enactus Canada with their social enterprise Vastum Plastics, aimed at addressing the issue of plastic waste in oceans.

The top 84 first-year students pitched their business idea to PepsiCo executives, local entrepreneurs and Lazaridis School alumnus David Chilton (BA Econ ’95) at the eighth annual PepsiCo Pitch Competition. Gabrielle Policella took home the top prize with her 120-second pitch on a safe, reliable, quick ice cube technology to detect the presence of date-rape drugs.

IKEA Canada once again sponsored an optional Lazaridis School student competition, the IKEA Sustainability Challenge. Second-year BBA students worked in small teams to come up with the most innovative solution to the question “How can IKEA Canada create the most value through contributing to the development of the circular economy?”, and the top five finalists went on to pitch their ideas to IKEA Canada executives. The Palm Oil Substitution Project, comprised of team members Spencer Barnes, Jake Fell, Matthew Imrie, Triet Nguyen and Zach Wilson, won the competition.

This year’s first-year Lazaridis BBA students worked with Kik Interactive executives to help solve a real business problem for the BU111 Live Case Competition. The first-place team, Lab B17 students Cory Katzman, Josh Kravitz, Kitty Liang, Monica Sedra and Noah Shechtman, proposed a post-secondary information bot that would help students quickly and easily find university program information.

For the 2017 BDO New Venture Competition, Lazaridis School first-year students generated their new venture ideas in the fall term, and then developed and presented their ideas this semester. The winning team, Pacifica Plastics – comprised of Matthew Fish, Andrew Guo, Daniel Hilbers, Shivani Mehan and Zhikai Zhan – effectively pitched their idea to use recycled ocean plastics to make eye glasses.

Team 54, made up of third-year BBA students Justin Arruda, Caleb Larrier, Jesse Liu and Taylor Wasser, came first in the winter 2017 ICE (Integrated Case Exercise) Week for company Canadian Tire, who challenged teams to improve their loyalty program.

The Lazaridis MBA students once again competed in the prestigious ASPEN case competition in which only 25 schools globally are invited. In the semi-finals they received honorable mention for finishing in the top 10.

On Laurier’s Brantford campus, the Business Technology Management (BTM) program started a case competition club that meets regularly to learn new material and practice case analysis skills, and has had three successful internal case competitions over the past year.

“Lazaridis School students continue to strive for success and demonstrate exceptional business acumen as our leaders of tomorrow,” said Micheál Kelly, dean of the Lazaridis School of Business & Economics. “These achievements are a great way to honour the Lazaridis School’s 50th anniversary and leaves me confident that we’ll continue to build on this level of excellence over the next 50 years.”