Meet Emmi Nguyen, Amara Wibowo, Emily Vang and Neha Shah, winners of the Deloitte Consulting Case Challenge at Virginia Tech. Their group name is Strong Women, a very fitting name for these Collegiate Women In Business members. Though the Strong Women weren’t originally planning on competing, Emmi saw an ad for the challenge and knew they had to join. This was the first time Strong Women competed as a group, but their hard work definitely paid off.
Every year, Deloitte sponsors and hosts the Consulting Case Challenge, a “real life exposure to consulting” for undergraduate students at universities across the country. Each participating group is given a hypothetical consulting-related case study, and are required to provide a solution using what they’ve learned in their business classes. In order for a group to participate, there must be four people who each have a minimum 3.3 GPA. Any major was welcome to apply. Once groups are given the case, Deloitte holds a workshop to help contestants with brainstorming solutions and designing a presentation. The groups present the next day, and are given feedback from the judges.
Once their application was accepted, the competition moved quickly. “The biggest challenge was the time constraint; it was very rushed and right in the middle of our classes,” Emily and Emmi said. Neha agreed that their biggest challenge was “finding the time to practice presenting. It was really late, but I enjoyed getting to know [Emmi, Amara and Emily] better.” Luckily, with the help of Marketing Management Professor Donna Wertalik, who helped critique and shape their ideas, the women were able to pull it off. “We were very excited when we found out [we won],” Neha said. “I was at the airport, and when Emmi called to tell me I didn’t believe her at first!”
As CWIB members, Neha, Emily, Emmi and Amana were able to apply valuable skills they acquired from workshops, treks and monthly meetings to their case study solution. “Going on treks and talking to people at the company visits really helped me [with this case challenge],” Amara noted. “Their experiences and thought processes helped us see what businesses really care about.” Emily was also grateful for experiences she gained from the CWIB treks and “talked about the New York trek when the group was given questions [from the judges].” Workshops helped the women see the problem from all different angles and Neha felt that they did very well on that as a group. Emmi made sure to comment that CWIB has “allowed me to reap the benefits of the past two years, from the opportunities to the tools in the club [that are available to us]. We are also using what we learn from class in the real world.”
Although they didn’t expect to win, these women will walk away from this experience with “a great confidence boost,” Amara said. “[Now] I feel like my ideas are valuable and mean something to other people.” Case challenges are a great way to jump into the business world and share your ideas with other students, all while incorporating your passions into business and problem solving. What was next for Strong Women? On March 8-10, they headed to Deloitte University to present their solutions at the National Undergraduate Case Challenge. Strong Women won the Social Media Contest for the National Undergraduate Case Challenge, and feel that “overall, the competitions both at Virginia Tech and Deloitte University in Texas were a great learning experience where we were given the opportunity to demonstrate what we have learned in and out of the classroom. We’re all extremely thankful for the feedback we were given and hope to apply it to anything we do in the future!” Great work ladies!