“And in first place…”
We held our breath.
I mean, this was months of effort. This was 8AM Zoom meetings during winter break and 9PM meetings on Mondays. This was frantically ordering Domino’s and arguing over the significance of PFAS contaminants. This was the Kogod Case Competition.
The roster, which had three Opportunity Fund members, was as follows: Sophie Viar, captain, sophomore in finance; Kabir Ramnani, sophomore in finance; Daniel Barberi, sophomore in finance; Maria Cayward, sophomore in AIM; and me, David Lu, a freshman in finance.
Our prompt: How to leverage AI for urban water solutions for Xylem, a water industry giant. And what’s more, we’re to scrub out and present solutions to none other than the Chief Strategy Officer of Xylem, as well as some other Xylem top dogs. Xylem, a Fortune 500 company that we knew nothing about.
None of us had done a case competition before, but we were all in the UConn Case Club (to the reader, if you can, join!). We all wanted to see something new, however, which is what christened our team name: Clarity Consulting.
Round 1 is simple — make a 2 minutes long video. 2 minutes isn’t a lot of time so we knew we had to be ambitious, punctual even. And the rig was as homemade as you can get — we’re talking AirPods for lapel mics and mismatched suits. Spontaneity, however, proved to be our winning trait. On recording day, as we were at the Student Union for a lunch break when we walked past the game room, to which I quipped: “Y’know, how funny would it be for Daniel to hit a pool ball into the pocket to start off his section?” Quip turns into reality as we begin rehearsing for a cinematic corner pocket shot.
As we learned from judges’ comments, that creative spark helped us stand out among the pool of 40 teams to become one of seven finalist teams. The takeaway, as we learned, is simple: be bold.
Round 2 was even simpler. A 15 minute presentation and a 10 minute Q&A section of unfettered, unadulterated grilling by the judges. Not long into our post-round 1 meeting did we realize that all our initial plans, a month’s worth of plans that were introduced in our video, had to be scrapped. Everything. None of it was panning out.
We learned that we couldn’t love an idea for too long. It’s easy to believe that you found “the one,” a soulmate, destined to be brought along with us to Washington D.C. What’s great about having a team of five is that there would always be someone to find a flaw in an idea. And if there was any reason for us to have an iota of doubt in an idea? To the bin it goes. In the words of Ariana Grande as she used to describe her past relationships, “thank u, next.”
By now, we knew everything there was to know about the specialty industrials industry. How could we not? We studied Xylem in and out. We parsed the K and Q. Heck, we built a DCF and comparable company model. The whole presentation was as polished as the 8-ball we used in round 1. The problem? While the presentation was finished, a presentation wasn’t. That is, it’s nice and all to have built-out ideas and pretty slides, but how’s your public speaking?
Taoism is based on the idea of balancing forces, and to an extent, it applies to public speaking. You have to be rehearsed, but not rehearsed to the point of memorization; confident, but not to the point of arrogance. We had that down pat.
Here came presentation day. At this point, we weren’t concerned about getting practice down — we felt solid. Of course, none of us can really know what the judges think of our idea until after the rankings announcement. It’s only if we win that the months of practice would finally feel validated (that, and the feeling that comes along with a cool $5000 in our pockets).
Walking out of the presentation room, we felt energized. It was the best run-through we had yet. Heads high, all we had to do was wait. Looking at the other teams gave us a sense of our competition: Wharton had slides chock full of graphs, while the other American University teams came with clever ideas.
The awards ceremony came, and by this point we felt dizzy. The announcer announced the 3rd and 2nd place winners, leaving but the 1st place position. If 3rd was American University and 2nd was Boston University, then it’s between us, Wharton, and the other American University teams. Did our months of grueling work pay off?
“… is Team Clarity Consulting, of UConn”
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