Goodman MBA student Chenxu (Emily) Feng was on the winning team at the DeGroote MBA Case Competition last month.

Hosted by McMaster’s DeGroote School of Business, the competition brought 16 MBA student teams together from across Canada. School teams were first split up and students were assigned to teams of four where they had 90 minutes to get to know each other and prepare for the case analysis before presenting their recommendations in a short pitch to a judging panel.

Feng was grouped with students from the University of Winnipeg, Telfer School of Management and Schulich School of Business.

Sponsored by 3M Canada, the case was interdisciplinary, allowing students to draw on each other’s strengths in various areas of business.

In the second half of the competition, the Goodman delegation was reunited to compete as a school team, where Feng was joined by colleagues Diana Lombardi, Adeyinka Mojola Oduyemi and Brandon Vrysen.

For Feng, a second-year MBA accounting (CPA/MBA) student, the best part of the competition was the networking opportunities it presented.

“There were executives from 3M, KPMG and IBM on the judging panel so we knew we were contributing to a practical problem. It was a great learning experience and it was so valuable to be able to network with management from 3M. So winning the prize was like a bonus for me,” said Feng.

The competition tested students’ business acumen and ability to create implementable recommendations to a specific business problem in a short period of time.

“This was such a good way to test what we had learned in the classroom. It was great to be part of the process and to see how the industry deals with situations where there is no correct answer. Just like in the business world, we tried to get to the best solution and implementation that made sense after taking everything into consideration,” she said.

Feng graduated with a Business English degree from Nanchang Hangkong University and worked for several years in marketing before deciding to pursue a Goodman MBA to achieve her dream of being an accountant.

“Especially for a non-native English speaker, it means a lot to win this award for public speaking,” she said.