A Sweet and Sustainable Victory

Thursday, November 25, 2021
by Keidon Giles

Hello UWaterloo Community!

strive team
We are Evelyn (bottom left), Joanne (top left), Philbert (bottom right), and Ceanna (top right), and we competed in the STRIVE National Case Competition in the upper-year student level and we emerged with a first place win!

This case competition required participants to deliver a strategic plan for Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company (and yes, they make a lot of sweets!). We were asked to create recommendations about sustainability practices, waste reduction, and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) goal achievement.

STRIVE reinforced the importance and value of team diversity. Given the tight deadline to analyze the situation, prepare recommendations, and produce a slide deck, we each played to our individual strengths and tackled different parts of the case. By the end, we were able to develop winning solutions that leveraged our team’s cumulative knowledge, skills and experiences!

The case competition gave us exposure to the growing importance of sustainability within business and society. As values change and businesses refocus toward achieving a wider set of ESG goals, it is important for us to understand the role that we can play as accounting and finance professionals.

The STRIVE experience was amazing! It provided a fantastic opportunity for us to think creatively, rely on the teamwork skills we’ve developed at SAF, and learn more about sustainability practices. For students looking for a great learning opportunity, we would highly recommend participating in case competitions!