Our way to STRIVE!

Tuesday, December 8, 2020
by Rocky L. - AFM

Photo of Rocky
I would never have thought that we would place 2nd in the STRIVE Conference competition. I’m not saying that we do not deserve to win, I am just so thrilled to see this result from my first ever case competition I participated in. On the contrary, my team and I not only did a great job, but we were also debating how the 1st place winners were able to outperform us.

I learned a lot from my teammates in this competition – shout out to the two upper-years (Murtaza and Bianca) who brilliantly dissected the case and inspired the team to go in a bright direction. One key factor to our success was the seamless collaboration within the team and the fact that we played to everyone’s strengths! The upper years voluntarily took over the quantitative aspects because they had more knowledge of the financial statements and the three second years (Nathan, Tiffany, and I) were focused on the qualitative side.

One more insight I gained from this competition is that your ideas are much more valuable than you think, so do not feel intimidated to speak up. In the discussion stage, I shared the past successful business partnerships of the company in our case I had found in my research and suggested to my teammates that we could recommend a similar approach to solve the current issue. And guess what – that impressed the judges and gave us an edge over the other teams!

Like my mom always says, “you never know if you never try”. Start making the first steps and discover how Waterloo’s accounting and finance programs can shape your future and be ready for the surprises – just like the one I just had!