MBA students use business smarts to fight poverty

 A team of MBA students from York University’s Schulich School of Business took home the top prize at a North American competition designed to find a real-world business solution for alleviating poverty in Ghana.

Known as the Project Pyramid Case Competition, the competition was organized by Net Impact, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to developing a new generation of leaders who use business solutions to bring about social and economic improvements.  

The competition was held at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and  involved teams of MBA students from 35 business schools across North America. In winning the competition, the Schulich team of Matthew Cohen, Ian Howard, Simon MacMahon, Bob Mann and Alexis Morgan beat out a number of teams from top-rated US schools such as Wharton, Duke, Michigan and Chicago.

Participating teams had to develop business solutions to a real-life poverty-related problem and present their business proposals to a panel of judges consisting of corporate executives. The winning team from Schulich received $10,000 in prize money.