Broad School MBA team takes first place at national case competition

Four MBA students from the Broad School earned first-place honors in the National Black MBA Case Competition held this past weekend in Houston, Texas. The students won $15,000 in scholarship money provided by competition sponsor Daimler-Chrysler, which will be divided among the four team members.

The Broad School students - Akilah Ellis, Carlos Johnson, Laith Maddur and Kendall Sykes - competed against 30 other MBA teams from across the country, including Duke University, MIT, UCLA, USC and the University of Texas, as well as several Big Ten schools. Their coach, Associate Professor Robert M. Wiseman, has led several MBA teams to victory over the past few years, including the Broad School team that took first place honors in the 2002 National Black MBA Case Competition and second place in the 2001 competition.

The coaching group also included Broad faculty members Glenn Omura and Chris White of the Marketing and Supply Chain Management Department, and Bill Roering and Frank Schultz, of the Management Department. Also helping in presentation development were Jack Bain, Liz Bain, and second year MBA students Subhamoy Ganguly and Jon Wood.

The two-day case competition is one of the highlights of the weeklong annual National Black MBA Conference http://www.nbmbaa.org/, which had more than 10,000 attendees. The competition pits teams of MBA students against one another in analyzing and presenting a business case. This year, the case that students were asked to analyze focused on Chrysler Financial Services and their attempt to sell auto financing to buyers of Chrysler Group vehicles. The marketing plan developed by the Broad School team was considered the best among all plans presented.

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