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Empower
Net Impact Case Competition: Create a Post-Pandemic Economic Plan
Smith MBA students Ashlee Albertson, Sara Bartzcak, Morgan Daly, and Daylin Russo placed fourth in the international Net Impact Case Competition (NICC) in March 2021.This year’s competition, sponsored by the University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, focused on creating an ethically centered vaccine distribution plan. This Case Competition was held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The competition challenged students to create an economic recovery plan tailored to a global pandemic. Teams were required to implement solutions that provided equitable social and economic impact, and that also paid respect to a country’s diverse communities. This year’s case challenge built on the NICC’s commitment to challenging students to find answers to major societal issues with a positive social, environmental, and financial impact. The Maryland Smith team advanced to the competition’s final round and took home $1,000 in prize money. The team’s creativity, conscientious ideas and fearlessness were on full display and CSVC is proud to recognize their hard work! — Ashlee Albertson, MBA Research Impact Fellowship (RIF)
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In June 2021, CSVC debuted its first-ever multidisciplinary undergraduate research program, the Research Impact Fellowship. This three-month-long remote program offers a hands-on learning experience for students to pursue academic research focused on promoting positive social impact through business. At its core, research is meant to bring understanding to the complexity of our world in hopes that understanding will lead to positive change. CSVC recognizes that there is a growing need for student involvement in shaping the future of business through impactdriven research. Working alongside expert faculty and business leaders, Research Impact Fellows will be able to analyze current business approaches, deepen their understanding of social value strategies, and be inspired to pioneer creative solutions. We believe the opportunity to lead and conduct their own responsible business research will prepare students to think critically and better understand the importance of balancing the interests of shareholders with the social outcomes of business. Over the course of 10 weeks, each fellow will conduct a research project on a topic that aligns with the center’s mission to create a world where businesses operate for the long-term value of both people and the planet. Some topics include corporate social responsibility; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); climate change; impact finance and ESG metrics; diversity, equity, and inclusion; COVID-19 impact; and more. In addition, students will attend weekly seminars and participate in 1:1 mentoring with research alumni, faculty, and field experts to strengthen their research and analytical thinking skills. We aim to present student findings at the Grand Challenges Symposium, where fellows will discuss the innovations, trends, and concerns as well as practical challenges encountered and solutions to their research topics.
BSE Case Competition
“In my Business, Society, and Economy College Parks Scholars program, the class of 2024 cohort was tasked with being a part of a case competition assigned by the UMD Center for Social Value Creation. In this competition, 16 teams were instructed to select a technological company that could improve in sustainability according to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. After completion, I realized that a great presentation is composed of great graphics, a strong message, powerful speech, and professionalism. These are all things that factored into my team winning first place.” — Sophia Wooden, Freshman
Phi Chi Case Competition
“The Phi Chi Theta social impact case competition connects eager Smith students with local non-profits in an engaging and impactful 2-week event. In the past, each Phi Chi Theta pledge class has participated in a case competition using a hypothetical prompt written by a major Consulting firm. The executive board and I wanted to re-energize the event so that students gain hands-on experience working for a real client and local nonprofits can receive quality pro-bono recommendations to help grow their organizations. Since the start of the Phi Chi Theta social impact case competition in Fall 2020, Phi Chi Theta pledges have worked with two non-profits in the DMV area whose missions center around community outreach and sustainability. The students conducted research, synthesized their findings, and presented final deliverables to the clients with solutions in brand management, fundraising and grants, and other strategic recommendations. As Pledge Educator, it was incredibly rewarding to see students develop critical skills while engaging with the community around College Park. I look forward to seeing this initiative continue in the future and greatly appreciate CSVC’s collaboration with Phi Chi Theta.” — Isabel Crocker ‘21 RedBlack Consulting
“I served as UMD AMA’s Vice President of Marketing Consulting for the 2020-2021 academic year and led the AMA’s student-run marketing consulting firm, RedBlack
Consulting. I had been connected with the CSVC previously while serving as an Account Manager on RedBlack and had benefited greatly from their advice and mentorship while working with a nonprofit client that they had introduced to our organization. While Vice President of Marketing Consulting, the CSVC introduced another outstanding nonprofit to RedBlack for student consultants to work with and conducted a workshop to teach student consultants about professionalism and relationship management with clients. The CSVC has always been an incredible resource, advising students and providing guidance that has helped enable RedBlack to complete multiple marketing consulting projects, effectively strengthening students’ marketing work as well as having a positive impact on local community organizations.” — Kelsie Oshinsky, Junior
“In the winter of 2021, in the midst of a global pandemic, a team of four outstanding leaders in the Smith community arose to discuss the investment feasibility of ExxonMobil in relation to their social impact and financial portfolio. The winning team consisted of Faben Henok, Ajay Shankar, Alex
Leipold, and Josh Chen. This was an interesting case competition as it was done completely virtual, from the team meetings, research, and even the competition. This was my first case competition in two years and I was ready to get right on it! Our team was ready the day we received the case and was able to map out when we were available to meet in addition to how were should attempt to approach the case. This case was particularly difficult as we needed to understand not only ExxonMobil but also the industry as a whole from an unbiased perspective. After a week of detailed research to get the full scope of the company and industry, ensuring we are answering the questions in the case adequately, and preparing to present to a panel of judges we felt confident in our presentation. Our team was able to quickly find each other’s strengths and add to them with our own strength which made our bond particularly unbreakable. I am so happy I had the opportunity to do the Smith Impact Case Competition as it taught me presentation, management, and research skills and how to be a more confident and collected young black woman in business. After the success of the Smith Impact Case
Competition, my team and I were able to represent the University of Maryland at the Milgard International
Case Competition, in which we were able to bring home first place in our presentation regarding the investment opportunity of Carnival Corporation.” Watch the recording here. — Faben Henok ‘21
After competing in the Smith Impact Case Competition and the Milgard International Case Competition, our team was eager to keep working together and excited when Nima introduced us to our next opportunity Nothing But Nets is the United Nations Foundation’s grassroots campaign dedicated to fighting malaria through awareness and providing bed nets for those at risk. The organization’s Partnerships Officer, Jonathan Kidwell, enlisted our help to ideate and design employee/stakeholder engagement scenarios for partnerships with three organizations: United States Liability Insurance (USLI), Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), and National Pest Management Association (NPMA). Whereas our recent case competitions had called for highly structured thinking to meet the competitions’ criteria, this opportunity encouraged us to think much more out-of-the-box and provided the chance to make a real-world impact. fter our kickoff session with Jonathan, Ajay, Faben, Josh, and I launched into brainstorming sessions to design a coherent and engaging narrative for each of the three scenarios. For the USLI scenario, we designed the “Around the World” activity, a virtual station-based experience where employees’ children travel from one country (station) to another within their home to be quizzed about the impact of malaria in each respective country and complete exercise challenges related to the questions. The WTA scenario, termed the EmpowerUp Experience, was designed as a partnership between WTA, Nothing But Nets, and GirlUp to offer a motivational experience for participating girls and an educational opportunity about malaria using tennis balls to visualize key statistics and share encouraging messages. Finally, the NPMA scenario gave us the opportunity to design the Nothing But Nets booth at NPMA’s annual PestWorld tradeshow. We developed a plan for an arcade style basketball game to collect donations for Nothing But Nets and encourage friendly competition at the tradeshow. The recommendations for each scenario were well-received, and Jonathan has informed us that the organizations will be implementing many of them for their partnership events. We are grateful to Jonathan and Nothing But Nets, as well as Nima and
CSVC, for making this tremendous learning opportunity and rewarding experience possible. —Alexander Leipold ‘21
Social Value Creation Case Bank
Thought Leadership Partners
Over the past year, CSVC has been compiling an extensive collection of diverse cases to be used by Faculty in a variety of different subjects. The Social Value Creation Case Bank is composed of over 120 cases from a variety of different sources pertaining to Social Value Creation and DE&I. Some cases touch on climate action, gender equality, sustainability, clean energy, and reduced inequality. These cases, available and disseminated to all faculty chairs, are to be used as a teaching tool in classrooms to demonstrate the importance of creating social value through business. Collecting these cases was a year-long initiative that required extensive, in depth research on topics relevant to classroom instruction. The collection contains a wide range of impact driven cases representative of all business disciplines and categorized by the academic department. Each category has cases pertaining to DE&I specifically due to its importance and relevance across all areas of business. We plan to continuously grow the case bank by conductingresearch and adding updated cases. The case bank also includes a comprehensive case directory that gives a higher-level overview of each case and the related SDG content areas.
Over the past year CSVC has joined three new international thought leadership partners. These organizations will help expand our mission globally. We look forward to the great collaborations that are to come!
Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME): We are excited to announce that the Robert H. Smith School of Business has recently been accepted as a member of The Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). PRME is a United Nations supported initiative that equips today’s business students with the understanding and ability to deliver change. PRME engages business schools to ensure they provide future leaders with the skills needed to balance economic and sustainability goals. PRME draws specific attention to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and aligns academic institutions with the work of the UN Global Compact. The Smith School, along with 800 signatories worldwide, is now a part of the largest organized relationship between the UN and business related higher education institutions. Being a member of PRME will give the Smith School access to a wide variety of resources such as PRME’s Global Forum, PRME innovation challenge, PRME Education Academy Seminar Series, and more.
Creating Value Alliance: The Center for Social Value Creation also partners with the Creating Value Alliance, an international alliance with the goal to spread the value creation mindset. The Creating Value Alliance is an international movement to increase our understanding of the concept of value and to find and promote ways of creating value consciously and more abundantly. This will allow us to operate more effectively, to build social value, and to thrive and be ready for the challenges of a constantly changing world. In addition to partnering with the Smith School, Creating Value Alliance currently has partnerships with schools and centers from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Japan. The Creating Value Alliance hosts global conferences on creating value, offers a Creating Value Certificate, social value articles highlighting CSVC, and more.
Network for Business Sustainability (NBS): The Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) is working to advance sustainable development to assure prosperity for all, today and into the future. NBS members are working to mobilize businesses to contribute to thriving communities and ecosystems by integrating academic research with practical experience. By becoming a member, the Smith School has access to more than 35,000 business leaders, researchers, and students from around the world as well as a community of 170+ sustainability research centers in business schools. Members of NBS are knowledgeable in a wide range of business areas and encourages business leaders and researchers to exchange ideas and push each other’s thinking. These ideas are shared through NBS’ podcasts, articles, reports, and meetings.
