By Nathaniel Luce
Pictured: Griffin Bell, Vanderbilt MBA’17, second from right.
A Vanderbilt MBA was a member of the winning team at the first-annual PepsiCo MBA Invitational Marketing and Finance Business Case Competition, held September 18-19 at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.
MBA students from 14 universities competed in mixed teams, presenting their strategy for a challenging business case to Frito-Lay CEO Tom Greco and other key executives from PepsiCo and KPMG.
Griffin Bell, a Vanderbilt MBA student who is specializing in marketing, strategy and brand management, was one of four students on the winning team, which took home $7,000.
“This type of competition is the reason I came back to school to get my MBA,” Bell said. “There’s no better opportunity to work on a real project, with real-world implications, than at the PepsiCo competition. It was extremely rewarding not only to win, but to know that our ideas were truly valued by PepsiCo leadership.”
Other members of the winning team included Vincent Lyons from the University of Illinois College of Business, Casey Spoden from the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business, and Chelsea Thompson from Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business.
“We gave them a challenging business problem to solve and they took it very seriously,” Greco said. “I have a lot of confidence that the ideas that came out of this competition are going to be implemented out in the marketplace. It is very rewarding for MBA students to ultimately see their idea come to life and see the success of the work that they’ve done.”
Each team was made up of randomly assigned MBA students from different schools. The teams received the case Saturday morning, worked with their teammates, and then presented their solutions to judges Saturday afternoon. Winners were announced at an awards dinner Saturday evening.
Joining the PepsiCo judges was Steve Hill, global head of innovation and investment at KPMG.
Second place and $5,000 was awarded to: Morgan Ferguson from Texas Christian University Neeley School of Business, Nishant Samuel from Duke University Fuqua School of Business, Wesley Rondinelli from Texas A&M University Mays Business School, and Kyle Ambrose from the University of Texas-Dallas Jindal School of Management.
Third place and $3,000 was awarded to: Kyle Tilley from TCU Neeley, Elliot Marks from Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business, Lauren Creed from SMU Cox and Taneisha Springfield-Jones from Illinois.
Other schools participating in the competition were University of Houston (Bauer), University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), University of Maryland (Smith), University of Texas at Austin (McCombs) and Washington University in St. Louis (Olin).
This is the first year for the annual competition, made possible by a partnership between the TCU Neeley School and PepsiCo. The competition coincides with PepsiCo’s recruitment for potential summer 2016 internships.
PepsiCo generated more than $66 billion in net revenue in 2013, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker and Tropicana. PepsiCo’s product portfolio includes 22 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.
Contact Person: Brett Israel Director, Business News & Communications Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management
Contact Phone: (615) 322-3469
Contact Email: brett.israel@owen.vanderbilt.edu
