Beedie School of Business News

Beedie School of Business alumna Salina Siu has been shortlisted for Tourism Australia’s The Best Jobs in the World competition.

Beedie School of Business alumna Salina Siu has been given an opportunity all graduates seek – the chance to land her dream job.

Siu is one of 150 people selected from over 600,000 applicants to advance to the second round of Tourism Australia’s The Best Jobs in the World competition. With six positions available, Siu is the only Canadian to make the 25-person shortlist for the Chief Funster position.

The Chief Funster position is based in Sydney and requires the winner to attend and review all the festivals and events the city has to offer over the course of the six-month assignment. The position comes with a $50,000 (AUS) salary, along with an additional $50,000 (AUS) to cover expenses.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and would be a crazy adventure,” says Siu, who previously served as social media intern in the Beedie School’s marketing department as well as stints with Invoke Media and SAP. “I am so passionate about social media, and to work in this field in such a great environment would be an amazing experience.” Keep reading…

Tags: AIESEC SFU, Alumni, Andrew Petter, BBA, Beedie School of Business, best job in the world, Chief Funster, communications, entrepreneurship, Invoke Media, Marketing, Salina Siu, SAP, sfu, social media, Tourism Australia, YouTube

Gordon Price, Director of the City Program at SFU, speaking at the Get On Board SFU event.

A group of Beedie school of Business undergraduate students explored how the forthcoming provincial elections will affect issues in public transit at an event held at SFU’s Surrey campus last week.

The event, Get On Board SFU, featured guest speakers Gordon Price, Director of the City Program at SFU, former Board Member of Metro Vancouver & Translink, and recent recipient of the SFU President’s Award for 2012; City of Surrey councillor Tom Gill; and Nick Smith, project manager at Sustainable SFU.

The event was organized by students in Beedie School of Business professor Dianne Cyr’s Business Leadership class in the BBA program. Cyr split the class into groups of five, and set each the task of working with a non-profit organization.

One group of students, Robin Dong, Joyce Mai, Ben Tan, Jason Yang, and Jerry You, opted to team with Sustainable SFU. After learning about Sustainable SFU’s Get On Board campaign, the students decided to organize the event to raise awareness among their fellow SFU students. Keep reading…

Tags: BBA, Beedie School of Business, community engagement, Dianne Cyr, experiential learning, Get On Board SFU, Gordon Price, Leadership, public transit, SFU President’s Award, SFU Surrey, Sustainable SFU, Tom Gill

Opportunity Fest 2012

The Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University will next week host the third annual Opportunity Fest, a marketplace-style showcase of student creativity aimed at seizing new opportunities and addressing perceived challenges through entrepreneurship and innovation.

Opportunity Fest 2013 will be held from 6 to 9pm on Tuesday, March 26 at the mezzanine of the SFU Surrey campus. The event is open to all, with current and prospective students from all faculties, university personnel and other community members encouraged to come and see what the next generation of entrepreneurs has in store.

Building on the success of last year’s event, around 150 Beedie undergraduate students from the Entrepreneurship and Innovation concentration will present their class-produced projects and ventures through trade-show exhibits. The student ventures build on opportunities in areas such as video-hosting, online Chinese literature and products made from reclaimed wood. Keep reading…

Tags: BBA, Dragon's Den, entrepreneurship, Eric Gedajlovic, innovation, Michael Cheng, Mr. and Ms. Opportunity, Opportunity Fest, SEY, SFU Surrey, social entrepreneurship, social venture, Student Entrepreneur of the Year, sustainability, undergraduate

Beedie School of Business undergraduate student Tamara Hombrebueno has been selected as one of 200 top students from across Canada to judge the 2013 TalentEgg National Campus Recruitment Excellence Awards.

The TalentEgg National Campus Recruitment Excellence Awards are presented to the employers who best illustrate how to achieve outstanding results in campus recruitment. The awards provide employers who hire Canadian students or recent graduates with student perspective on campus recruitment.

Each year TalentEgg selects top students and recent graduates to serve on the judging panel to evaluate and provide feedback on employers’ campus recruitment initiatives. Keep reading…

Tags: AIESEC, BBA, Be Engaged, Beedie, beedie ambassador, Leadership, talentegg, TalentEgg National Campus Recruitment Excellence Awards, undergraduate

The 2013 Beedie School of Business JDC West team

SFU’s Beedie School of Business captured the Academic School of the Year award at the prestigious JDC West case competition, held from January 18 to 20 at the University of British Columbia, edging out stiff competition from 11 other leading Canadian business schools to claim the title. The Academic School of the Year award is presented to the team which achieves the highest overall finish in the JDC West competition’s ten academic categories.

In addition, the Beedie School of Business placed third in the School of the Year category and enjoyed further significant success in the individual competition categories, taking first place in the International Business and Finance competitions; second place in the Management Information Systems, Business Strategy, Human Resources and Taxation categories; and third place in both Accounting and Debate.

“The success our 2013 JDC West team enjoyed is a tremendous achievement and reflects the well-rounded attributes of our undergraduate students and the alumni coaches who supported them,” said Andrew Gemino, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs.

“Competing with so many other top business schools and being named Academic School of the Year is a testament to the quality of education our students receive at the Beedie School of Business. The students, coaches and staff that supported this effort can be rightly proud of their success.” Keep reading…

Tags: Academic School of the Year, accounting, Amit Bhagat, Andrew Gemino, BBA, Beedie School of Business, Business Strategy, Case competition, case competitions, competition, Dean’s Circle, Debate, finance, human resources, international business, JDC West, Jeux du Commerce West Business Competition, Joel Thom, KPMG, management information systems, Maney Grewal, Sean Peters, sfu, SFU Beedie, Simon Fraser University, Student Engagement Office, Taxation, UBC, undergraduate, University of British Columbia

Sam Thiara, Associate Director of Undergraduate Alumni Engagement at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, a special commemorative medal honouring the significant contributions and achievements by Canadians. The award is being given to Thiara in recognition of his outstanding engagement and leadership.

Thiara has worked with hundreds of students and alumni since joining SFU’s Beedie School in 2004, and has also volunteered countless hours for various community initiatives in Metro Vancouver and beyond.

An alumnus of SFU as well as the University of Exeter in England, Thiara joined the Beedie School in 2004 as a manager of student recruitment and engagement. To date he has worked as a mentor and coach to hundreds of students, both as individuals and as teams, and recently helped coach a team of students to a silver medal at the International Institute for Business Development Case Competition in Thailand.

Prior to joining SFU, Thiara worked as the Community Consultation Manager for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Bid Corporation, where he was responsible for building relationships with communities and providing the public with information about the bid. Keep reading…

Tags: BBA, case competitions, coaching, engagement, International Institute for Business Development Case Competition, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, mentoring, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Sam Thiara, storytelling, student engagement, student recruitment, TEDx, TEDxSFU, University of Exeter, Vancouver 2010 Olympic Bid Corporation, Vancouver Board of Trade, volunteering

A group of undergraduate students at the Beedie School of Business have been helping Vancouver achieve its target of becoming the world’s greenest city by 2020 through a class project with a distinctly sustainable theme. This past fall, students in the class Business 443: New Product Development, taught by Lisa Papania, were tasked with conceptualizing, [...]

Keep reading…

Tags: BBA, Bus433, entrepreneurship, experiential learning, Greenest City 2020, innovation, Lisa Papania, New Product Development, recycling, SFU Surrey, sustainability, textile recycling, undergraduate

A recent graduate of the Beedie School of Business has topped the National Honour Roll for the 2012 Uniform Evaluation (UFE) in Western Canada.

Ivan Wong, having completed his BBA degree in accounting with first class honours in June 2012, has earned the Chartered Accountants of Canada Gold Medal and cash prize of $2,500 for the highest standing in Western Canada.

A current articling student with KPMG in Vancouver, Wong has achieved an impressive 4.26 CGPA during his studies at the Beedie School of Business and has also completed the co-op program.

“The UFE met my expectations in terms of the high level of difficulty and challenge, as well as the feeling you get on the way out: that you might have failed,” said Wong, who completed the exam just three months after graduation.  “Making the honour roll was obviously a huge surprise—never mind tying for a gold medal!”

As a part of completing their Chartered Accountant (CA) Designation, all candidates must write the UFE, which is reputed to be one of the most challenging professional examinations in the world.  The three-day exam is the final examination towards completing chartered accountancy and is a culmination of years of studies in accounting and finance, as well as economics and other university-level business courses.

For more information: Chartered Accountants of British Columbia

Tags: BBA, Beedie, Beedie School of Business, Chartered Accountants of British Columbia, Chartered Accountants of Canada, Ivan Wong, sfu, SFU Beedie, Simon Fraser University

A team of Beedie School of Business students today captured silver in one of Asia’s most rigorous case competitions, the International Institute for Business Development (IIBD) Case Competition.

The team, consisting of BBA students Iris Luong, Renee Chau, and Stefanie Klein, along with MBA student Rob Graham, was one of six teams selected to compete in the final from an initial field of 28 entrants from 12 different countries worldwide. The team was awarded a prize of US$400 and a trophy for their second place finish.

This year’s final was hosted by Assumption University, Bangkok, Thailand, and focused on workplace sustainability. The competition format is intended to highlight the strategic challenges and managerial dilemmas faced by global business leaders. Teams were presented with a real world business case and given six hours to research and analyze the case to develop a workable set of action plans and recommendations to present. Keep reading…

Tags: Assumption University, Ateneo de Manila University, BBA, Beedie School of Business, Case competition, Chinese Business Research Centre, global business, Hong Kong Baptist University, IIBD, international case competition, International Institute for Business Development, Martin de Tours School of Management and Economics, MBA, Sam Thiara, student experience, Thammasat University, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, undergraduate, Wing Lung Bank

The BEAM students visited the head office of RBC on their recent trip to Toronto

A group of undergraduate students at the Beedie School of Business have been immersed in the finance world recently, starting with a trip to Toronto to view the city’s finance sector first-hand, and ending with their third quarter presentation as managers of the Beedie Endowment Asset Management fund.

The Beedie Endowment Asset Management (BEAM) fund was established in 2011 and is the largest undergraduate-run investment fund in Canada, with $5 million invested in Canadian equities, fixed income and cash. Students participating in BEAM are responsible for managing the fund, and receive hands-on experience in investment research, analysis, and trading in bonds and equities markets.

Participants in BEAM are expected to present their performance on a quarterly basis to a performance review committee consisting of industry experts, and the current students were able to present some positive figures for quarter three.

The portfolio yielded a 3.01% return in quarter three, which created a $147,000 profit for the quarter overall. The portfolio ended the quarter above the initial $5 million investment, the first time it has risen above its starting investment since its establishment. Keep reading…

Tags: asset management, BBA, BEAM, Beedie Endowment Asset Management, BMO, bonds, CPPIB, equities, experiential learning, extra-curricular activity, finance, fixed income, hedge fund, investment research, NexGen, Polar Securities, RBC, risk management, Scotia, Sprott Asset Management, student experience, TD, undergraduate