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The Desautels Graduate Management Challenge (DGMC) brings together MBA students from top universities across Canada to tackle real business problems faced by companies today. DGMC 2018 was hosted by the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Case Competition Association (MCCA) on March 10th, 2018.

Strategy and Business Analytics were chosen to reflect the surge in global data and increasing demand for skilled data analysts as firms around the world realize the benefits of utilizing actionable insights strategically from masses of data. With DGMC 2018, MCCA enabled top MBA students to showcase their skills in a competitive environment solving real business problems with innovative ideas. See photos

The six participating teams for the 2018 edition of DGMC were:

• Desautels Faculty of Management, ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ
• Faculty of Business Administration, Université Laval (two teams)
• HEC Montréal
• Schulich School of Business, York University
• Smith School of Business, Queen’s University

On the morning of Saturday, March 10th, the students and judges gathered for the competition in the new Donald. E. Armstrong Building. The first round of the Challenge consisted of a 15-minute pitch followed by a 10-minute Q&A period.

After the judges deliberated, the three finalists were announced:

• Team Laval: Catherine Gibeau, Roxanne Lessard, and Kevin Belanger
• Team ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ: Emily Meng, Hien Thai, Yen Nguyen and Yusra Laghari
• Team Schulich: Joseph Flager, Grishma Saheba, Jonathan Linton and Catherine Sim

Vocaprep and Aimia were also on-hand to give presentations, which were followed by the final team pitches. The teams were given 20 minutes for their presentations so that they could answer two additional questions.

After the closing cocktail, the winners were announced: Team Schulich won the Strategy award and Team Laval won the Analytics Award.

The MCCA wants to thank the participating teams, , and for their generous sponsorship and a special thank-you to the judges.

Round 1 – Panel A

• Oli Dervey, Director, Travel Strategy, Aimia                                                
• Adel Awara, Founder, AM Group
• Kaylin Haill, MicroStrategy               

Round 1 - Panel B                                                     

• Joshua Shragie, BCom’07, Director, Strategy and Planning, Aimia 
• Michel Girard, Chef de la Pratique Analytique, Banque Nationale
• Michael Suarez, MicroStrategy        

Final Round                                                   

• Beth Quinton, VP Strategy, Aimia                
• Mike Ross, MBA’11, CEO, Vocaprep 
• Eric Simard, MBA’13, Senior Consultant, Roland Berger
• Thai-Son Nguyen-Quang, Director, Corporate Strategy & Operations, Fresche Solutions

About MCCA

The ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Case Competition Association (MCCA) is an organization composed of current MBA students who come from diverse experiences and backgrounds including Strategy, Technology, Finance and Marketing. The ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Case Competition Association was formed with the mission of hosting a world-class professional case competition at ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ.

This year’s Executive Team consisted of: Justin Leung, David Fernandez, Karen Vanthuyne, Seif Zeineldin, Sreehari Nair, Abhinav Ravi and Jessica Truong.

The incoming Executive Team members are Pallavi Borkar, Devashree Gharat, Julio Castaneda, Valeria Cevallos and Kris Manipon.