LEWISTON, Idaho – A team comprised of three students from Lewis-Clark State College placed second in the International Accreditation Council for Business Education (IACBE) Student Case Study Competition. The students will be awarded $800 and were offered internships on-the-spot during their competition last week.
Officials announced the results on Tuesday during a virtual awards ceremony. The competition was held fully online and hosted 190 students who represented 20 schools internationally. Each of the 54 teams had approximately one month to prepare for the competition. This is the first year LC State has had a team compete, and its team was only 0.75 points behind the first-place team, from Chaminade University of Hawaii who has been a prominent participant in the competition for many years.
The team was composed of William “Cy” Wareham (double majoring in business administration and computer science:software engineering) and Kenneth “Teak” Wareham (double associates in natural science and mathematics) of Genesee, and Espen Williams (double majoring in sport management and business management) of Clarkston. The team was coached by LC State assistant professor Jennifer Uptmor.
The competition challenges teams to develop an innovative marketing strategy to help fulfill a company goal. This year the company was WealthFluent and its goal was to connect with early-career professionals to promote financial literacy and disrupt the traditional wealth management industry by making financial planning more accessible, tech-driven, and empowering. To accomplish this, the team attended a kickoff webinar, Q&A webinar, two office hour sessions with the company founders/officers, a target market deep dive, competitive market analysis, marketing strategy, and an implementation plan. The team had to provide a final written executive summary and present its strategies in a virtual pitch presentation with WealthFluent’s executive team. The presentation component of this competition was reserved for the final 12 teams.
“We are so incredibly proud of the team and how they used their wide variety of disciplines and degrees to work together so well,” said Jenny Scott, LC State interim chair for the Business & Computer Science Division. “This achievement is the result of hard work, research, creativity, and collaboration, and to do this well the first time through is outstanding.”
To learn more about the IACBE Student Case Study Competition visit: iacbe.org/events/student-case-study-competition/