Term 1, 2018
In this issue...
From the editors
From the Editors
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From the SRC President
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Message from The Dean
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Women in leadership: Naomi Simson
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Alumni spotlight: Asaf Katz
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Introducing the 2018 SRC
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MBS Carlton campus revitalisation
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Tips for engaging with innovators and entrepreneurs
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Student exchange
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Inside clubs: The Consulting Club
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The business journey: Ben Dingle
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Alumni reunion
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Events at MBS
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Dear readers, Greetings and a warm welcome to the first edition of The SouRCe for 2018. With a renovated campus, the School rising phenomenally up the Financial Times global MBA ranking, and with adaptive learning models to be launched for the core subjects from term two onward, it's an exciting time to be at Melbourne Business School. We bid farewell to our Dean Zeger Degraeve as he steps down after six successful years leading the School, and we welcome distinguished economist Professor Ian Harper as our new Dean and look forward to tackling new challenges together. You will notice in this issue of The SouRCe that we have done away with a few regular features to introduce some freshness to our coverage. We feel privileged to share the work of so many thoughtful and committed people. We hope you enjoy this edition and do let us know if there are any topics you would like to see covered in the future. Yours faithfully, The Editorial Team
MELBOURNE BUSINESS SCHOOL 200 Leicester Street Carlton VIC 3053 Australia Program Services T: +61 3 9349 8203 E: programservices@mbs.edu Student Representative Council T: +61 3 9349 8400 F: +61 3 9349 8404 E: src @mbs.edu W: mbssrc.com.au
Nicholas Brittain
MBA Part-Time 2016
Gaurav Vikash
MBA Part-Time 2017
Emily Stewart
MBA Part-Time 2015
facebook.com/MBSSRC twitter.com/MBSSRC
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Sundaresh Gurumurthy
Master of Marketing Part-Time 2017
From the SRC President to help bring the MBS community together and I’m looking forward to seeing you all there.
Greetings readers, Happy New Year and welcome to 2018! I hope you had a pleasant break with family and friends and have been enjoying the start to the New Year. For those that have just joined us, welcome and we hope your time at MBS will be everything you imagined it to be, and more.
Tickets for the MBS Ball recently went on sale and I hope you’ve already got yours secured! Last year saw us reliving the Gatsby era, and we have no doubt that this year will be bigger and better than ever. All the details will soon be announced. Thanks to Sudi for being ‘Event Manager Extraordinaire’ and planning a night that I have no doubt will be one to remember for students, past and present.
The team as a whole values feedback, both positive and negative, on any school and/or SRC related matters so that we can continue to address your needs and improve your student experience. Please do not hesitate to approach any of us. We maintain an open door policy at all our meetings and encourage anyone to join us if they have anything they wish to raise. I hope you all have a great term and I wish you all the best for exams. Jude Newton SRC President | MBS
The SRC is all about making sure your time at MBS is as enjoyable as possible.
The new SRC is excited about the year ahead and we have great plans to bring you more opportunities to network with current, past and exchange students. The renovations at the School, especially ‘The Hub’, are going
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN Zeger Degraeve Dean | MBS
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to the first edition of The SouRCe for 2018. I hope you have made a great start to what I am sure will be a challenging and rewarding year for you all. As you know, this will be my last contribution to The SouRCe as Dean, and I would like to take this opportunity to say that serving you and meeting so
many talented students, alumni, faculty and staff at the School over the past six years has been an absolute honour and privilege. With the fantastic news of our 10-place jump in the latest Financial Times Global MBA ranking fresh in mind, I am proud to be handing over leadership of the School in such good shape to Professor Ian Harper, who takes over in March. Professor Harper is a highly esteemed economist in government and business circles, a Reserve Bank Board member and a former Melbourne Business School Distinguished Fellow. His leadership can only enhance the School’s reputation and profile and your future success. As you look around, you will see that the final touches are being made to the new reception and Social Hub areas, which are designed as warm and
welcoming spaces where you can meet and connect with the exceptional business talent that makes its way to our School. Make the most of these wonderful spaces to network and make new friends for life. I will certainly miss the buzz and excitement that comes with every new and graduating class at Melbourne Business School. As a student, you are following in the footsteps of many exceptional business leaders who have come before you, so do your best to emulate them while supporting each other and enjoying yourselves as much as you can. I wish you every success in your studies and future career, and I am sure you will make us all proud of your achievements. Zeger
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FEATURE Women in leadership Naomi Simson is the founder of RedBalloon and appears on Network Ten’s ‘Shark Tank’ as an investor.
Photo: Naomi Simson
What are your tips for a MBS student thinking about launching a start-up? A start-up is not a project or assignment; if it is a real business it could be your whole life. Ask yourself, ‘Is this what I want to dedicate my life to?’ The entrepreneurial life is not as glamorous as one thinks. Being driven by passion and purpose is exciting, but the most important attribute is to listen and learn. I wrote 84,000 words to help people prepare for life as a business owner. If you are thinking about it, take the time to read Ready To Soar.
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People “that are able
to be their authentic self, are articulate, inspired and convey a sense of trust are usually the ones that have success.
”
What’s the best elevator pitch you have heard? Why was it good?
Do you think female entrepreneurs face any unique challenges? Did you face any?
According to novelist Jeffrey Archer, a good story can be told in 100 words, and it is no different in a pitch. It is storytelling with numbers. Remember who you are speaking to; be in their world and have some level of emotional connection to the problem you are solving. Having seen hundreds of pitches, I feel it is unfair to have a favourite. All pitches are different. People that are able to be their authentic self, are articulate, inspired and convey a sense of trust are usually the ones that have success.
There are loads of articles about the lack of capital available to women to grow their enterprise, but also they have to ask – and ask for enough. Consistently in the pitches I see, women ask for less money. Perhaps they are realists on the expected outcome, or perhaps they are concerned about their ability to pay it back. I believe there needs to be a shift from both sides. Ask and you may receive, don’t ask and you definitely won’t. To that end I am not a great example as I funded my own
businesses out of savings, and grew each of the enterprises from cash flow. (I always say customers are the best investors you can have.) My challenges have not been around finances, more around ‘perception’ versus ‘reality’. People like to attach labels to me; ‘fierce’ would be one of them. Yet perhaps a man would be labelled ‘focussed’. Who knows? I just get on with the job of serving customers. They are, after all, my future. What do you wish you’d known when you were first starting RedBalloon? That there would be another Christmas! I say that with jest, but I start planning Christmas in about February and we always seem to run out of time to have everything we want ready. I wish I had had a crystal ball when it comes to tech. The legacy systems, and old-cold fusion platforms took considerable time and effort to retire. The cloud-based applications now available give start-ups a much clearer run at staying on top of systems. Oh, and I wish we had had Salesforce way back when, and taken to mobile faster and … the list goes on!
Alumni Spotlight : Asaf Katz Asaf Katz is a MBS alum from the 2015 Full-time MBA. He started his career as an Officer in the Israeli Air Force, worked as an engineer at Intel, was a consultant with Bain and now runs a number of start-ups including Truckiez and Cann10. The SouRCe caught up with him to talk about his Australian entrepreneurial adventure. What led you to the MBA at MBS? In Israel, you go to your day job and in the evening you meet people and talk about your start-up. For me, I wanted to live overseas and have a lifestyle that would allow me to work in start-ups. Undertaking an MBA in the USA meant I would end up with a huge debt. I might make a great salary working for, say, Google but most of it would go towards recovering my debt. That didn’t make sense to me. That’s when the MBS MBA came into my thinking. It was a shorter commitment, I got a scholarship, I got to live in Australia and so it all came together nicely. How did you build your entrepreneurial network? Just before I moved to take up the MBA, I was offered an amazing role by someone I had worked with previously. It made me realise that the more people I meet, the more opportunities it will create. During my MBA, I had a disciplined approach. I had a plan to meet at least two people each week; that’s 100 people by the end of the one-year program. I had a list of 500 people in Melbourne I wanted to meet and I reached out and met with as many as I could. I respected their time, structured the meetings and learnt to contribute insights when I could. That’s how I met an entrepreneur
who was into online education, which led to my current project on medicinal cannabis. What was your experience balancing school and running the start-up? My presentation on gap analysis and opportunities saw me invited to join in the start-up project. I had no title but I had a job! I was attending school in the day and taking an Uber to work after school and working at night. Managing both school and the job was crazy but awesome as well. However, the daily quiz at school was terrible for me. It was a shitty feeling to keep getting low marks but I realised I only needed high marks if I wanted to go into consulting. The dashboard of grades and marks was not leading me to much, so I set my own dashboard with my own KPIs: Am I meeting enough people? Am I increasing value to myself? How do I measure my value to the industry?
broke that record – that’s the worth of having faith. Challenge what everyone is doing and ask what is really leading you to this and be disciplined about how you pursue it. From the MBA you get a lot of good insights that open your thinking. However, getting comfortable with not having a regular salary and the shift away from salary negotiations towards business discussions takes training for most people. Speak to people (founders) who have been there and use your network to reach out to people and learn from their experiences. Good luck!
What’s your advice for budding entrepreneurs? Have a plan – your own plan – and really stick to it and things will happen. It’s a hard journey, the sort where you must continuously build self-confidence and have faith in yourself. In the 1940s it was accepted that people are not able to run a mile in less than four minutes until someone who hadn’t read the research
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Student Representative Council 2018
President | Jude Newton
Vice President | Christine Smith
Treasurer | Andrew Cromwell
jnewton1@student.unimelb.edu.au
christines3@student.unimelb.edu.au
a.cromwell@student.unimelb.edu.au
Secretary | CJ Yeap
Clubs Officer | Prottoy Sen
c.yeap2@student.unimelb.edu.au
p.sen@student.unimelb.edu.au
Marketing and Comms | Shayne Kumar s.kumar23@student.unimelb.edu.au
Major Events | Sudi Chandrasekharan
General Events Coordinator | Srinath Susarla
Class Rep Coordinator | Rahul Khatri
(continuing role)
s.susarla@student.unimelb.edu.au
r.khatri1@student.unimelb.edu.au
Alumni Liaison | Sundar Gurumurthy
Academics Liaison | Helen Smith
Careers Liaison | Elissa Gu
(continuing role)
(continuing role)
s.gurumurthy@student.unimelb.edu.au
h.smith14@student.unimelb.edu.au
e.gu2@student.unimelb.edu.au
narasimhans@student.unimelb.edu.au
Admissions & Exchange Liaison | Acacia Smith (continuing role)
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a.smith63@student.unimelb.edu.au
Photo: Asaf Katz
MBS Carlton campus revitalisation
The largest upgrade of the Carlton campus since late 1980 is complete and the results are looking great. The School invested $14.75 million in the revitalisation in 2017 to ensure our home remains a world-class centre for business education in the heart of Melbourne's knowledge precinct. The major refurbishment of multiple spaces means we can now deliver our
portfolio of top-ranked executive education and degree programs on one site.
also additional syndicate rooms added to the first floor and a new study space in the Mill area.
The revitalised campus now includes a new reception area complete with massive, information-rich electronic screens, and the Social Hub opening into the courtyard, where our whole community can come together and relax. There are
The aim of the revitalisation project is to support students to learn, develop and network with business leaders, faculty and fellow learners, while making the most of our proximity to Melbourne’s unparalleled cultural, sporting and business life.
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Tips for engaging with innovators and entrepreneurs Kwanghui Lim, Associate Professor of Strategic Management at Melbourne Business School, shares three tips for innovators in Melbourne.
Over the past decade, the Melbourne innovation ecosystem has taken off. We are now the home of many start-up firms, accelerators, incubators, angel investors, venture capitalists, corporate funds and social entrepreneurs. Engaging with this ecosystem is valuable for MBS students. Some of our students want to become startup entrepreneurs and this is now a viable career path. Others want to continue working at established organisations, such as banks,
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retailers, consulting firms and social enterprises. Established organisations are facing tremendous market and technological change. As a consequence, when hiring and promoting staff they are starting to view innovative thinking and connectedness to the innovation ecosystem as valuable attributes. Over the past few years, I have developed several new courses with colleagues and ecosystem partners.
These include the MBS Innovation Bootcamp, Biodesign (biodesignmelbourne.com), and the capstone project for the Wade Masters of Entrepreneurship. Based on these experiences I would like to share three tips for engaging with innovators and entrepreneurs in Melbourne. Tip #1 – Connect diverse areas The innovation ecosystem is rapidly evolving, but the key players are
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closely knit. I encourage you to attend several pitch nights and you will observe a diversity of ideas being explored; you will also start to recognise several individuals and firms often involved. While it is not important to know everyone within the ecosystem, it is important to build a broad range of ties with people across domains. A diverse network is a great source of new ideas, and when it is time for you to execute on an idea you need to build a team (or rely upon partners) who have a range of skills. This perspective is well supported by the research literature on innovation, including my own research on knowledge brokering and bridging.
“ People within
the innovation ecosystem appreciate and respect others who are dynamic and are themselves contributors to the community.
”
A good place to start is by attending events organised by the MBS Entrepreneurship Club, as well as STEMBEA, which includes MBS students and alumni. You should also get in touch with the growing network of innovators among MBS alumni, including students who have experienced Biodesign and the Innovation Bootcamp. Other excellent starting points include pitch events and mixers organised by Startup Victoria, the Melbourne Accelerator Program, Translating Research at Melbourne program and the Wade Institute. One mistake I often observe is MBA students attending such events in groups, but spending the entire time
with each other rather than engaging with people from other backgrounds. Resist the temptation to stay within your comfort zone! Make it a personal target to meet at least three new people from different backgrounds at each event. Tip #2 – Participate, don’t just meet My second tip is that you should not just attend events for the sake of meeting people, but go a step beyond. People within the innovation ecosystem appreciate and respect others who are dynamic and are themselves contributors to the community. Avoid being just a bystander. Instead, step forwards and be proactive. There are many opportunities to do so. Join a team that is trying to pitch an idea, or take part in competitions (our students have participated in Medtech’s Got Talent, the Global Business Challenge, Nespresso Competition, Intel Case Competition, Hult Prize and others).
“A diverse
network is a great source of new ideas, and when it is time for you to execute on an idea you need to build a team who have a range of skills.
”
If you aren’t the sort of person to enjoy competing, there are other ways to signal a genuine intent to engage. Offer your time and skills to organise events, such as inviting guest speakers to MBS to share their experiences. Use your MBA skills to be a mentor to teams working on innovative projects. Or, engage your workplace to organise a hackathon (possibly involving external parties),
or to join forces with MBS and our partners to run an innovation-oriented event for your industry. Tip #3 – Understand the value you bring My final tip is to reflect upon and articulate the value you bring along when engaging with others in the innovation ecosystem. Learn to pitch yourself. Just like you, the people you meet are also trying to find others with complementary skills: MBAs with whom to partner and work with on innovative projects that will solve important organisational and societal problems. As an MBA, there are many opportunities to add value. Some of you have expertise in marketing; others are knowledgeable about finance (this is particularly important in our age of digital transactions and blockchains). Some of you have strong leadership skills or experience managing human systems and processes. These are valuable skills and in my experience they greatly complement the skills found within technical teams that originate from science or engineering areas. Being clear to yourself and others about what value you bring can help break the ice when you first meet others. It also forms a good foundation for developing a working relationship later on. To conclude, the evolving innovation ecosystem presents MBA students with new opportunities. We are fortunate that the key players within the Melbourne ecosystem are highly supportive of one another and it is a highly inclusive community. If you have been hesitant to engage with others within the innovation ecosystem, now is the time to jump in. I hope these tips will help you get started.
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STUDENT EXCHANGE Jessica Morrison Part-time MBA 2016
Why did you choose an exchange to London Business School?
What was the best part of your exchange?
I chose LBS because I wanted to see what it would be like to live in London. It is essentially a perfectly positioned hub for travel bugs that want to explore Europe – me being one!
The networking component really enriched my MBA experience. I even had the opportunity to travel to Lisbon for an LBS exclusive MBA networking event that invites any current students (exchange students included) and alumni from around the world to meet and stay connected. I attended many recruitment events that expanded my knowledge for different career paths. I was also an intern for an LBS startup, which was a great experience.
What was being an exchange student like? LBS is an incredibly diverse school and I had the opportunity to make friends from all around the world. There were about 70 exchange students for the Autumn term when I went so I certainly didn’t feel alone. LBS is a very social place. The university clubs rotate the responsibility for hosting weekly dinner and drinks for two hours on campus – this is called ‘sundowners.’
What advice do you have for students thinking about going on exchange? While it is very tempting to spend all your time outside of school travelling, you would miss out on immersing yourself in all that LBS has to offer – both socially and professionally. I would suggest that future exchange students not neglect this and make the most of the LBS experience.
Photo: Jessica Morrison
WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT MBS’ EXCHANGE PROGRAM? Vist LMS or email exchange.program@ mbs.edu. • Programs range from one week to three months. • You can obtain credit for up to four subjects. • You must complete all core MBA subjects before you are eligble for exchange. • Selection is based on a 100-word personal statement detailing why you want to go on exchange as well as evidence you are actively engaged in the MBS community. • All classes are in English. • You pay your normal fees to MBS, but be prepared for extra costs! These may include accommodation, transport and administration fees.
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INside clubs The Consulting Club
What is the vision of the Consulting Club? The Consulting Club aims to prepare students for careers in the consulting industry through the development of case interview skills, industry insights, and networking with other high achieving students and with MBS alumni working in the industry. What do students gain by attending? Every unique case gives you the opportunity to showcase your business acumen through a framework of your own creation. Good frameworks are dynamic, concise and integrate the learnings of the MBA. The opportunity to enrich and enlarge your networks is always there. After case practice finishes at 4pm you’ll find 10–15 people head off for a pint or a bite to eat at Don Dons. This is where the magic happens. It’s relaxed, carefree and there is a mix of genuinely good people committed to weekly practice and entering the consulting industry. You’re guaranteed to meet an interesting person from another cohort, or an EMBA or SEMBA student. If you botch the case the beer tastes good, if you smash the case the beer tastes better. It’s a win-win situation.
Alumni consultants at the big firms want to help current students. Accordingly, every month in 2018, you’ll see consultants come in and help out with case practice. If they notice you’re struggling, they’ll give you real-time feedback on how to improve. Their time is precious, however they also understand the importance of maintaining their relationships with MBS, and building new ones with promising students, because consulting firms depend on recruiting the best and brightest. It’s another win-win. What's coming up? Weekly Case Practice: Every Saturday 2–4pm in the Pelham Room, MBS Conference Centre. Quarterly Case Bootcamp: Held in June, September and December each year. In conjunction with alumni consultants, the club is developing a ‘New Member Toolkit’ that will include fundamental techniques, key frameworks, and an industry overview. The club expects to roll this out shortly. For the first quarter of 2018, an Induction Session will replace the Quarterly Case Bootcamp. This Induction Session will be facilitated by the club and uses the Toolkit.
Who are the driving members of the club? Full-time President: Patrick Murray Part-time President: Sunny Chow Part-time Case Leads: Jonathan Haniman, Warren Sequeira Full-time Case Lead: Val Li How can students get involved? Full-time and Part-time students considering attending Weekly Case Practice or the Induction Session should reach out to the leadership team on Slack. To get the most value from case practice, Part-time students are advised to start attending weekly practice after completing their core subjects and transferring into the MBA program.
Follow the MBS Consulting Club MBS Consulting Club MBS Consulting Club https://melbizschool.slack.com/ consultingclub@mbs.edu
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FEATURE The business journey Ben Dingle is widely recognised as a large-scale dairying innovator and leader with extensive industry and regional networks.
Tell us a bit about your business ventures. After university and an extended overseas experience (three years) in a French skiing resort, I returned to New Zealand and commenced a dairy, share-farming business. After 10 successful years, with two co-founder colleagues, we founded Synlait (now a $1.4 billion NZX ASX company) in 2000. The Synlait business evolved as a farm property development company using our core farming and project management skills. We successfully developed a number of best practice dairy farms using the latest irrigation technologies, GPS, mobile controls, milking technologies, and animal EID
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technologies. Once we had a largescale operation, we amalgamated the business, and moved up the value chain by building our own milk powder drier.
“An MBA is not a recipe; it’s a facilitation of better thought processes, confidence and connections.
”
Our farm development model expanded, creating further equity gains until the GFC in 2008/09.
We eased up on farm development and I stepped aside from the Synlait management retaining my governance input, which ultimately saw us take Synlait to a very successful IPO in 2013. With my time freed up, I travelled around the world researching my next business idea. The digestive benefits of goat milk and the gap in supply of goat milk to produce nutritional infant formula gave me the exciting opportunity to establish Nuchev in Melbourne in 2013. Our Oli6® brand is positioned as a healthy infant formula milk, and sells primarily through pharmacies in Australia and mother and baby stores in China. Nuchev’s vision is to provide food for a better life.
You had 20 years of business experience before starting your SEMBA. How did your time at MBS help you? The SEMBA modules are carefully designed for people with substantial business experience. You learn not just from the faculty, but also from your cohort members who have very deep experiences and capabilities in diverse areas. An MBA is not a recipe; it’s a facilitation of better thought processes, confidence and connections. The learning from my cohort was the most important, and then connections were extremely helpful. Especially when you are trying to start a business, you need local connections to provide credibility and validation. Do you see the grey market in infant formula as a threat, or as an opportunity? It’s an opportunity. Many brands have used the grey market legitimately to build their business. An infant formula buyer in those grey markets trusts a credible Australian brand more than an equally good local brand. We sell Oli6 ® in Australia and China with a focus on local mums. It’s the same brand but has differences in the recipe and artwork to reflect differences in local consumer preferences and regulatory requirements. Some of what we sell in Australia ends up in China via legitimate online platforms such as JD and TMall. This well-regulated channel is known as cross border e-commerce (CBEC). Some product is also posted direct through a wellregulated channel. These channels complement each other in terms of market penetration, sales volumes and margin.
It’s an opportunity, if you have got your offering right to cater to a range of preferences across different markets. What skills should MBA students gain to be a part of this phenomenally growing dairy industry in Australia? There are a lot of cross-functional skills we need in this industry. Essentially we are a marketing company. We have outsourced our middle piece of supply chain because we didn’t want to own those tricky operations. We built capability upstream because we knew the supply there was limited. Aspiring entrepreneurs need to identify their own strengths and weaknesses with reference to any industry, and then play to their strengths rather than trying to do too many things. What advice would you offer to people about to start their entrepreneurial journey? The most critical part of being an entrepreneur is the ability to execute. Plenty of ideas, networks and knowledge can be gained, but sooner or later you need to execute. People who are successful are the ones who can roll their sleeves up and get things done. How you do it is determined by your style, your hunger for efficiency and your focus on the long-term vision. At times it may not be perfect or pretty, but the main thing is you need to get it done. If you can’t get it done, you won’t go far.
bring all these qualities together. MBA teaches you that, especially through syndicate work. In tough situations you need to step up and think how you’re going to effectively work with everyone to get the result you need.
“Aspiring
entrepreneurs need to identify their own strengths and weaknesses with reference to any industry, and then play to their strengths rather than trying to do too many things.
”
Invariably, you will need to have a healthy dose of leadership capability. I like to think of leadership as the capability to ‘rally people to a better place’. To get them there, great leaders don’t only direct, they also lead by example from the front, at times by pulling it together and having honest conversations. If you can demonstrate these capabilities, investors will support you. A lot of people with money can’t do what you can do, and investors need people like you. You need to get a real buzz about making it happen.
Do you think entrepreneurial qualities can be taught or are people born with them? I don’t think people are born with them. It helps to be competitive, you need to be honest and resilient with yourself, and at times you need to
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EVENTS Alumni reunion
This year's Alumni reunion was held on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th February. Over 250 MBS graduates from the past 30 years returned to the School during the two-day event. Alumni from Australia, New Zealand, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Europe attended the reunion to reconnect with old classmates and to hear from faculty and guests in a series of expert panels and lectures. The event featured guest business leaders from the AFL, Wallabies, Forethought Research, Kegstar, Bright Arena, Telstra, Australia Post, NAB Labs, Tennis Australia and more. The newly created communal space at the heart of the School – The Hub – hosted Chinese New Year festivities as part of the Alumni reunion cocktail reception. The party also included a photo booth for those who felt like playing dress-ups. More pictures of the event can be found at https://mbs.edu/news/.
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events at mbs
EMBA/SEMBA The EMBA class of 2018 recently undertook the Industry Studies in Asia module in KL Malaysia, where they tackled projects for GE Malaysia and Malaysia Airlines. They also visited Nestlé and Maxis. The SEMBA class of 2018 visited MBS partner institution WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany, for the Industry Studies in Europe module to cover topics such as innovation, emerging markets and European economics, as well as to visit various companies. For more information about EMBA/ SEMBA programs reach out to emba@ mbs.edu. CMC events The Career Management Centre (CMC), under the guidance of Nicola Barnard, offered a range of webinars and workshops, and facilitated three industry panels throughout term one. CMC is geared for more in term two. Please keep an eye out for emails from CMC. CampusGroups mobile app is another effective way to manage your event registrations and reminders. For more information email careers@ mbs.edu. The Hult Prize Foundation competition The Hult Prize Foundation regional competition was held in Melbourne on 9th and 10th March. Hosted by Melbourne Business School, the event gave host to 49 competitive teams from universities around the world as students vied for a chance to win the coveted Hult Prize, affectionately referred to as the Noble Prize for students.
Five teams from MBS made it to the regional finals to be held in Melbourne, Mexico City, Singapore and Kuala Lampur. This year’s challenge was harnessing the power of energy to transform the lives of 10 million people. For more details visit http://www. hultprize.org/. Founded in 2009, The Hult Prize Foundation is the brainchild of entrepreneur and Hult International Business School MBA alum Ahmad Ashkar. It aims to connect people and ideas to propel the creation and development of for-good, for-profit startups around the globe. For more details visit http://www. hultprize.org/. The Geneva Challenge The Geneva Challenge aims to encourage interdisciplinary problemsolving analysis among master students on advancing human development within the scope of a relevant topic. The Geneva Challenge 2018 will distribute AU$32,432 in monetary prizes, with finalists invited to publicly present their work in Geneva before a panel of high-level experts. Registration deadline is Monday 16th April 2018, with submissions due Monday 20th August 2018. For more information and how to apply, please visit http://graduateinstitute.ch/ TheGenevaChallenge
MBAus The MBAus conference 2017 was attended by over 200 students from 12 Australian universities and was presided over by 20 champion speakers of different global organisations. This inaugural conference was a great success and the team is dedicated to make the August 2018 edition of this conference even bigger. Reach out to contact@mbaus.edu.au if you would like to be involved. For more information visit http://www.mbaus. com.au. MBA Cup The MBA Cup is fast approaching. Scheduled to be held at Melbourne Business School on 27th–29th July, the competition pits Australia’s top business schools against each other. This year, traditional rivals Melbourne Business School (MBS) and Sydney’s Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) are set to go head-to-head yet again in a fierce battle for the coveted title of MBA Cup champion. Can MBS secure the Cup again for the fourth consecutive year? Stay tuned to find out. Events calendar MBS Ball: 12th May 2018 MBAus:
August 2018
MBA Cup: 27th– 29th July 2018
MBS Ball This once-a-year event is not to be missed. Taking place at The Mural Hall on Saturday 12th May, the SRC has worked hard to make this year’s ball even more entertaining and memorable for students and their partners. Tickets to the ball sell out quickly, so get in fast to avoid missing out!
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Congratulations to the Graduating Class of 2016 p16