A team of four HBA students took home the first-place prize at this year’s Border City Financial Case Competition, organized by students at the University of Windsor.
Winning students Bohan Jiang, Maxim Verzunov, Jane Wang, and Gary Wu had competed together in a case competition once before, where they placed second. They came to the Border City Competition hungry to prove themselves and get the top spot.
The case competition began with a typical first round: Students received a case, worked on their solutions, practiced their presentation, and presented to the judges a few days later.
But the second and final round challenged students to think on their feet. For the finals, students had a two-hour time frame where they worked on a case and presented to judges – without practicing as a team.
“Volunteers followed us and prevented us from rehearsing before the presentations,” Jiang said. “We were forced to coordinate amongst ourselves and present spontaneously, while keeping track of the time restrictions that were set for us.”
Trusting in teammates
One of the reasons the students say they excelled in this competition was their trust in each other’s individual abilities.
“This experience taught me the importance of making the best use of everyone’s strengths on a team,” Wang said. “We worked well as a team because everyone put in hard work and we had trust in our abilities.”
“We trusted each other to work under pressure and deliver a quality product,” Verzunov said. “The rapidity of the finals forced our team to decide on a plan of action right away and use our individual talents to tackle each part.”
An inspiring speaker
The case competition included a keynote speaker from an Ivey alum, Victor Oreskovich, MBA ’16. A former NHL player who now works at RBC, Oreskovich shared his unique story and career path with the students.
“His story really blew us away. He spoke about how he battled through a lot of injuries as well as other ups and down,” Wu said. “It was really inspiring to hear about his journey and how he persevered.”
The Ivey students competed against 15 teams from schools across North America, including University of Waterloo, George Brown College, Georgetown University, Sheridan College, University of Toronto Scarborough and St. George Campus, University of Guelph, York University, and the University of Windsor.
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