2nd Year Smith MBA’s Shine at Hitachi Foundation’s
Pioneer Employers Case Competition

Smith MBAs Fernanda Lopez, Lacey Nguyen, and Stephen Huie won first prize in the Hitachi Pioneer Employer Curriculum Change Competition and Second Prize in the Hitachi Pioneer Employer Case Competition. The Smith team reached the final round, held at the 2011 Net Impact Conference in Portland, OR, in late October, after passing the first rounds last spring. The competition involved a case competition and curriculum change component, both focusing on the strategic human capital management of low-wage workers at the bottom of the ladder.

The Smith team was recognized for having the most solid integration of Pioneer Employer cases focusing on low wage workers into a school’s curriculum. In the case competition, judges were impressed by how effective the team members were at communicating their points, both written and verbally.

Through the competition the team was able to take a step back from the intensity of the MBA program and learn more about how courses are structured and the modules used to teach new concepts. To develop and implement their curriculum change proposals, Lopez, Nguyen, and Huie worked closely with Dean Hugh Courtney, faculty from the M&O and DOIT departments at Smith, and faculty research centers, including the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), the Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC), and the Center for Social Value Creation (CSVC).

The competition was a great way for the team to apply the skills they developed in the core curriculum at Smith. “Through this human capital case we were able to apply what we had learned in our core Leadership and Teamwork course, but equally importantly was our ability to quantify the argument for investing in low-wage workers by applying our analytical skills,” Huie said.

Other participating schools in the competition were the Yale School of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management, the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University, and the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. More information about the competition and Net Impact is available at netimpact.org/learn/blog/pioneer-competitors-pave-the-way. 

Huie said that “overall this was a very meaningful experience,” as he incorporated the skills gained at Smith and his past experience in community organizing to create a cogent argument for improvement of conditions for low-wage workers.

Kim Robertella, Program Manager, Center for Social Value Creation