Third-Year Student Wins Top Prizes in Multiple Competitions

Congratulations to Trevor Van Den Heuvel, a third-year student in the Department of Chemical Engineering who, along with his teammates Jeff Qiao Wang and Denis Goubkine, achieved first place and a $500 prize in the 2025 Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Club Case Competition.

This competition took place virtually and challenged undergraduate student teams to provide strategic advice for a legacy department store experiencing challenges with customer loyalty, inflation, and margin pressures.

Van Den Heuvel and his team developed a strategy to increase the revenue and profitability of the department store by leveraging AI price matching and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) tactics to appeal to a younger generation that is sensitive to prices. Their innovative solution took first place. By participating in the contest, they gained valuable insights into deal execution, stakeholder management, and data analysis.

In addition to the Wharton competition, Van Den Heuvel also attended the McKinsey & Company Challenge, a two-day competition featuring 36 students selected from top schools across the Ontario region. He was one of only two students chosen from the University of Waterloo to attend.

 Placed into groups of four, they formed a total of 12 teams competing to provide strategic advice and solutions to a local Toronto client. Van Den Heuvel's team placed in the top three in this competition.

“This event provided insights into the firm and helped refine my consulting approach. With the guidance of a mentor in each group, we learned how to effectively tackle complex problems,” said Van Den Heuvel.

Van Den Heuvel also took first place at the AVAX Blockchain Hackathon at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, securing a $3,500 prize. He and three other team members developed "Lmit8 SocialFi," built on AVAX L1, which pays users in a native token for uploading selfies of an emoji and rates them using machine learning on a scale of 1-5.

Van Den Heuvel plans to pursue a graduate degree and is considering a career in either finance or consulting after completing his undergraduate degree.