Student Team from York University Develops Winning Solution Against Global Poverty in Competition Sponsored by Vanderbilt’s Owen School
NASHVILLE (November 7, 2007) – Twelve student teams from 10 leading universities put their ideas to the test in the battle against global poverty this past weekend during the inaugural Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management Project Pyramid Case Competition. Held at the Net Impact Conference, the world’s largest gathering of socially responsible graduate business students and young professionals, one school emerged the winner: Schulich School of Business at York University.
The competition, sponsored and hosted by the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management, is the only contest of its kind and the brainchild of Vanderbilt’s Project Pyramid, a student-driven initiative to arm future leaders at all of Vanderbilt University’s schools with the business tools to produce sustainable solutions that alleviate poverty.
Contest finalists were challenged to develop sustainable ideas for how Project Pyramid could use $75,000 in funding to best alleviate poverty for the largest number of people or gather the most support for and interest in poverty alleviation. Solutions could revolve around any aspect of poverty alleviation and be enacted anywhere in the world except for active-conflict areas. The winning idea – developed by Schulich team members Bob Mann, Simon MacMahon, Matthew Cohen, Ian Howard and Alexis Morgan – was a highly collaborative, locally focused social venture capital model.
Over the course of the two-month contest, 35 student teams from three continents competed in two rounds of competition for $15,000 in prize money, provided through a generous gift of support by Cal Turner, Jr., chairman of the Cal Turner Family Foundation and retired Chairman and CEO of Dollar General Corporation. Ten schools were then invited to participate in the final round during the conference, resulting in the top three teams (York, University of Chicago and Georgia Tech) reviewing their presentations to the competition’s final round question before a panel of corporate executives during the final day of the conference (November 3). Judges for both rounds included Project Pyramid student members and Owen faculty.
“The Vanderbilt Owen Project Pyramid Case Competition serves as a unique opportunity for emerging business leaders to bring their ideas to bear against issues of global poverty,” said second-year Owen student Asif Shah Mohammed, one of the contest’s organizers. “We look forward to an even greater number of participating schools and students next year, with increasingly innovative solutions to help alleviate poverty-related suffering throughout the world.”
Final round participants included the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, York University, University of California – Davis, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Minnesota, University of Chicago, Georgia Tech University, Duke University and University of Virginia.
Vanderbilt’s Project Pyramid was established in 2006 by Owen students dedicated to the elimination of global poverty, including the principle of investing in the poor through microfinance championed by Nobel Peace Prize winner and Vanderbilt graduate Muhammad Yunus. The initiative now involves scores of students, faculty and administrators from across all areas of the university.
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Vanderbilt Owen School of Management is ranked as a top institution by BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Financial Times and Forbes. For more information about Owen, visit www.owen.vanderbilt.edu.
