Professionals Take on the Case After only two months of school, a team of first-year Rice MBA for Professionals – Weekend students traveled to Disneyland in October 2009 to present at the final round of the National Association of Women MBAs (NAWMBA) Case Competition during NAWMBA’s conference and career fair in Anaheim, California.
“The Rice MBA experience allowed us to step outside our professional and intellectual comfort zones to try something new,” Craig Horak said. “As production superintendent with Occidental Chemical, I applied my engineering background and things I learned in core classes to a marketing case competition.”
Congratulations to 2009 NAWMBA Case Competition finalists: Craig Horak, Leo Maguchi, Bonnie Houston, Jason Zengel and Aaron Webb — all Rice MBA for Professionals – Weekend, Class of 2011.
Case Competitions
Locations
Wake Forest MBA Marketing Summit
Wake Forest Schools of Business, Wake Forest University
Daniels Race & Case
Daniels College of Business, University of Denver
Minority MBA Case Competition
Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University
Net Impact Case Competition
Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder
Simon Marketing Association Case Competition
Simon Graduate School of Business, University of Rochester
National Black MBA Association Case Competition
Location of Annual Conference
National Hispanic MBA Association Case Competition
Location of Annual Conference
Global Business Challenge
National University of Singapore Business School
Thunderbird Sustainable Innovation Summit
Thunderbird School of Global Management
Innovation Challenge
Darden School of Business, University of Virginia
Ethical Leadership Case Competition
Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University
MBA Open Mic
McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
National Energy Finance Challenge Case Competition
McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
UNC Real Estate Development Challenge
Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina
Rice University Marketing Case Competition
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University
Equipped with varied backgrounds in engineering, economics and international business, the exuberant team of five included Craig Horak, Bonnie Houston, Leo Maguchi, Aaron Webb and Jason Zengel. It was Leo who proposed the idea over dinner in the Anderson Family Commons in mid September. “Do we want to try this?” The answer was a resounding yes. For Leo, an assistant manager in sales and marketing at Marubeni America Corporation, the value of the experience was in “forming the group and applying what we’d been taught at such an early stage.” Having already made it through the first two rounds of the competition via email, the team got the call that they’d made it to the finals. “It was a lot of work coordinating our jobs and personal schedules to add extra time for preparation,” said Jason, group head, Americas Region at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Company. “But the program had already introduced us to the importance of juggling several things at once so I was excited about the opportunity.” In the final round, up against five other teams and using the same company and case background material as in the first two rounds, the team had 15 minutes to present their case analysis to a panel of judges and an additional five minutes to answer questions from the panel. “It was kind of intimidating,” admitted Aaron. “As a sales engineer at Protos, I don’t often get large-venue presentation opportunities so I jumped at the chance. It was an incredible learning experience. I found myself having ‘aha’ moments when something came up in class that we could’ve applied in the competition.” The group plans to enter at least one more case competition during their second year. “Our approach would be so different this time,” said Bonnie, Project Manager at National Oilwell Varco. “We’d add more quantitative information and restructure our analysis. We will be much better prepared to compete.”
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