Jane McPhail, Bryce Ritter, Siddharth Bhartiya and I make up the team of MBA students from the Mason School that was invited to the semi-final round of the Ninth Annual LEEDS Case Competition: Innovate for Impact at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
We will will fly out to Colorado in late February to compete with other business school teams chosen to advance to the next round. Out of 68 online first-round submissions, only 20 teams were invited to the semi-final round and are still in the running for the prize money totaling $10,000.
Each year, the LEEDS Case Competition focuses on an issue of sustainability. For the first round, teams were charged with finding a solution for the increasing food demand in the face of increasingly limited farmable land and putting together a presentation intended for the USDA.
The solution that our team created and proposed was a two-part implementation plan called T.U.R.F. – Technology for Urban & Rural Farming. Although there were strict rules on how a presentation could be assembled, we figured out how to make our presentation stand out among the rest.
And that is exactly what we intend to do in the next round of competition. If you are interested in learning more about the competition, check out the LEEDS Net Impact Case Competition site.
Currently, we’re trying to raise enough funds to cover our travel expenses. We have raised enough to cover most of the trip, but we are still in need of about $600.
If you are interested in being one of the team’s sponsors, please make a donation online by following these steps:
- Go to the mason.wm.edu/supportingmason
- Click on the “Give now” button on lower left side of page
- Fill in all fields with an asterisk (*)
- Very important: Copy and paste the following text in the comments field of the form: “Please donate this to the Mason School Annual Fund to be used for the LEEDS Competition in February of 2010.”
- Complete your payment information and click on “Proceed to confirmation.”
For more information about team sponsorship, contact Bryce Ritter at: Bryce.Ritter@mason.wm.edu.
Wish us luck!
