Beedie School of Business News

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 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

Visiting Italian fashion students from the Università Bocconi were given a guided tour of iconic Canadian retailer Holt Renfrew

Business students from Italy spent July in Vancouver as part of a unique collaboration between SFU’s Beedie School of Business and the Università Bocconi – and were given a crash course in Canadian culture as part of their visit.

The visiting students from Bocconi, located in the fashion capital of Italy, Milan, and regarded as Italy’s top business and economics school, were paired with SFU students from the “Business 492: Management of Fashion Companies,” class as they learned about the global fashion industry.

To mark Canada Day the visiting students attended a seminar on Canadian culture, chaired by Sam Thiara, Associate Director, Undergraduate Alumni Engagement at the Beedie School of Business. A trio of guest speakers from varied backgrounds were on hand to share with the students what being Canadian means to them. Keep reading…

Tags: Beverley O’Neil, Bocconi, Bocconi Campus Abroad, Dutil, Holt Renfrew, international business, international education, international exchange, Lululemon, Management of Fashion Companies, Rebecca Rytir, Riaz Meghji, Sam Thiara, Terry McEvoy, Universita Bocconi

Students from Simon Fraser University showed Canada what they “dared to do” when they finished among the top ten teams at the SIFE National Championship.

The competition, part of the 2012 ACE National Exposition held from May 7 to 9 at the Telus Convention Centre in Calgary, Alberta, featured over 50 schools from across Canada competing for the title of national champions.

After successfully negotiating the opening round, the SFU team advanced to the final ten and a semi final knockout round. Despite a strong presentation which drew standing ovations from several of the judges, the team was eliminated by eventual champions Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Sam Thiara, Associate Director, Undergraduate Alumni Engagement, was left with no doubt that the students can take great pride in their performance. “One judge told the team that in three years of judging, he had never seen a presentation as solid as (SFU’s) and to keep up the amazing work,” says Thiara. “There were tears from our team because they felt that they gave the performance of a lifetime and they had recognition that they did an exceptional job.”

Having attended the event for the past seven years in support of the SIFE Simon Fraser team, Thiara is well placed to comment on their current and future prospects. “The students earned respect and credibility. The hard work by all showed and they were true champions.”

Tags: ACE, ACE National Exposition, Sam Thiara, SIFE, SIFE National Championship

by Joanne Leung

Some of the world’s most prestigious business schools met in Vancouver for CaseIT 2012, an annual international undergraduate case competition with a strong MIS focus designed to find the best and brightest in strategic IT case analysis.

Hosted annually by Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, CaseIT is an entirely student-organized event in which 16 university teams compete in a 24-hour case deliberation.

The winners of this year’s CaseIT competition were:

1st Place: Kwantlen Polytechnic University
2nd Place: National University of Singapore
3rd Place: Kelley School of Business (Indiana University)

Some other universities that competed in CaseIT were the University of British Columbia, Queen’s University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Sydney, and the American University of Beirut.

Since its inception, CaseIT has given students from around the world the opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge that they obtained in the classroom to real-life business scenarios through strategic IT analysis and presentation.

CaseIT began in 2004 as a competition between undergraduate teams within SFU, and the event grew with each year: it expanded to Western Canada in 2005; across Canada in 2006; to the United States and Denmark in 2007; to Africa, Asia, and Europe in 2008; and finally to Australia this year. The current competition format of 16 teams was finalized in 2009, and in 2010 the preliminary round was introduced.

The event was chaired by Nima Sarhangpour, a fourth-year student at Beedie School of Business concentrating in Management Information Systems (MIS) and Management & Technology, and a candidate for the Business Technology Management (BTM) certificate. Sarhangpour, who is extremely passionate about CaseIT, returned for a second year to serve as Chairperson of CaseIT 2012.

“It is not often you can say you can see growth, development and legacy,” Sam Thiara, Student Engagement Manager at SFU Beedie, said of the event and the student organizers and participants. “I am very proud of their work.”

To find out more about the CaseIT MIS Case Competition, visit http://caseit.org

Tags: Beedie, Beedie School of Business, case competitions, CaseIT, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, management information systems, MIS, National University of Singapore, Nima Sarhangpour, Sam Thiara, sfu, Simon Fraser University

Sam Thiara, Student Engagement Manager at SFU’s Beedie School of Business, is slated to speak at the upcoming TEDxSFU, the first event of its kind hosted at Simon Fraser University. Thiara, who is also an alumnus of the business school, will be joined by fellow BBA alumnus Shawn Smith, who is co-founder of Global Agents for Change and an instructor of social entrepreneurship at the Beedie School.

The TEDxSFU organizing committee is also pleased to announce that John Furlong, CEO, Vancouver 2010 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) and Vancouver Police Department Chief Jim Chu will be speaking at the inaugural event on Saturday November 26, 2011.

Mr. Furlong and Chief Chu will join the extraordinary collection of gifted storytellers to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes or less. TEDxSFU is an independently organized event licensed by TED.

Hosted at Westminster Savings Theatre at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey Campus, speakers will immerse attendees in lively conversations surrounding the main theme of the event, Community Engagement. Throughout the day attendees will have the opportunity to network, connect and collaborate with one another.

“Community engagement can be interpreted in many different ways and we are so thrilled to have two renowned leaders from our own backyard offering their unique perspectives on this theme to the world.” said Michael Cheng, TEDxSFU Founder and Licensee.

The speaker lineup will also feature other leading thinkers in the realm of community engagement, including Colleen Hardwick, Founder and CEO of Placespeak.com and 10-year old Ta’Kaiya Blaney of the Sliammon First Nation.

There will be a limited number of event tickets available and applications are currently being accepted. For those unable to attend in person, TEDxSFU will also be streamed live via LiveStream.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago, TED has grown to support world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. At TED, the world’s leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Two major TED events are held each year: The TED Conference takes place every spring in Long Beach, California (along with a parallel conference, TEDActive, in Palm Springs), and TEDGlobal is held each summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.

TED’s media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily; the new TED Conversations, enabling broad conversations among TED fans; and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TEDTalk to be translated by volunteers worldwide.

TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world are given the opportunity to put their wishes into action; TEDx, which offers individuals or groups a way to host local, self-organized events around the world; and the TED Fellows program, helping world- changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

Tags: Jim Chu, John Furlong, Sam Thiara, Shawn Smith, Ta’Kaiya Blaney, TEDx, TEDxSFU, Vancouver Police Department

SEATTLE– A team of students from the Beedie School of Business is enjoying the afterglow of a successful journey to Bellevue, Washington to participate in one of North America’s highest-profile business ethics competitions.

The students — Fahad Yasin, Christine Prasad, Sasha Vukovic, Moira van den Akker, and Andrew McKinlay — competed in the LMU/ECOA Intercollegiate Business Ethics Case Competition (IBECC), held in Bellevue, Washington from September 21-22. The team competed against a prestigious international field that included the likes of Oxford, USC, INSEAD, Holy Cross and Boston College.

Among the honours they received was winning the Hannah Arendt Essay Award, funded by the Honorable Judge Ruth Kraft of the New York bench, and recognizing the best essay of the competition about the ethical dimensions of a business case.

The team also took home hardware as 2011 Consolation Winner, securing the team’s ranking in the Top 5 for overall competition, and as first runner-up in the international category.

The five undergraduate students from the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University had used Vancouver’s 2011 Stanley Cup Riot as a case study to examine the growing role that social media plays in society and business.

The team’s chosen ethics case concerned the immediate aftermath of Vancouver’s 2011 Stanley Cup Riot in a human resources context. The team was coached by Sam Thiara, Manager of Student Engagement and Recruitment at the Beedie School of Business, and alumnus Pam Hernandez.

The competition was jointly sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Business at Loyola Marymount University, the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas and the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (ECOA). The 2011 competition was held at the ECOA’s annual business ethics conference in Bellevue.

Teams in the competition conducted research on a contemporary issue in business ethics of their own choosing and prepared a 20 to 30 minute presentation, which they presented to a panel of 4 or 5 judges.

Tags: BBA, case competitions, ethics, Facebook, Pam Hernandez, Sam Thiara, social media

SEATTLE– Five undergraduate students from the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University are using Vancouver’s 2011 Stanley Cup Riot as a case study to examine the growing role that social media plays in society and business.

The students — Fahad Yasin, Christine Prasad, Sasha Vukovic, Moira van den Akker, and Andrew McKinlay — are competing in the LMU/ECOA Intercollegiate Business Ethics Case Competition (IBECC), held in Bellevue, Washington from September 21-22. The SFU Beedie team is competing against a prestigious international field that includes the likes of Oxford, University of Southern California, INSEAD, Holy Cross and Boston College.

The team’s chosen ethics case concerns the immediate aftermath of Vancouver’s 2011 Stanley Cup Riot in a human resources context. It revolves around a Lower Mainland construction company whose employee made favourable comments about the riot on his Facebook account. After receiving upwards of 100 emails from an agitated public and customer-base, the company’s owner had to make a difficult decision of how to react to this public relations nightmare – and how to deal with the employee. The SFU student team is examining the situation from the perspective of the employer on the day after the riots.

“What we’re really looking at is social media and the role it plays in our society and business,” said Beedie School of Business undergraduate student Andrew McKinlay. “This new phenomenon can be a useful tool, but if used incorrectly, can result in huge costs, both tangible and intangible. While how to use social media most effectively is still unknown, we do know one thing for sure: Social media is blurring the line between our public and private lives.”

The team will be coached by Sam Thiara, Manager of Student Engagement and Recruitment at the Beedie School of Business, and alumnus Pam Hernandez.

The competition is jointly sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Business at Loyola Marymount University, the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas and the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (ECOA). The 2011 competition will be held at the ECOA’s annual business ethics conference in Bellevue.

Teams in the competition research a contemporary issue in business ethics of their own choosing and prepare a 20 to 30 minute presentation, which they present to a panel of 4 or 5 judges. Teams explain the legal, financial and ethical dimensions of their problem, and they then propose a solution that must pass muster on all three counts. Judges question the teams for another 30 minutes, and then give the teams feedback on their performance.

For more information, visit:

http://cba.lmu.edu/academicprograms/centers/ethicsandbusiness/competitions.htm

http://cba.lmu.edu/academicprograms/centers/ethicsandbusiness/competitions/2011_September_Field.htm

Contact:

Andrew McKinlay – ajm24@sfu.ca
Sam Thiara – sthiara@sfu.ca
Derek Moscato – derek_moscato@sfu.ca, 778-782-5038

Tags: case competitions, ethics, Facebook, human resources, Sam Thiara, social media, Vancouver 2011 Stanley Cup Riot

Sam Thiara, Manager of Student Engagement and Recruitment at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University, has been recognized for his longstanding engagement and leadership by the Leaders of Tomorrow program (LOT) of the Vancouver Board of Trade.

Keep reading…

Tags: Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, Mentorship, Sam Thiara, Vancouver Board of Trade