BYU Team Overcomes Obstacles to Place Second at Net Impact Competition

PROVO, Utah — Apr 23, 2003 — Despite being one teammate short, arriving at the competition with only five minutes to spare and having to begin planning their case in a car by flashlight, a team of three students from BYU’s Marriott School recently placed second at an international business ethics competition.

The team consisting of Isaac Appiah, Rick Bingham and Marcie Holloman competed against four-person teams from 14 other universities at the Net Impact 2003 International Case Competition hosted by the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This is the first time BYU has sent a team to the competition.

"We went there a little unsure about what to expect. We were given a case that included an ethical dilemma and told to report back at 9 the next morning with a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation," says Appiah, a second-year MPA student from Cape Coast, Ghana. "We got there at 6:40 p.m. The cases were handed out at 6:45 p.m. Then we had an hour and a half drive to the place we’d arranged to stay."

Team member Rick Bingham, a first-year MBA student from Centerville, Utah, had mixed feelings when the team advanced to the finals.

"The lowest point for me was when we were announced as finalists," Bingham says. "I had been up all night and was ready to just sit back and watch the other presentations. When they announced we were finalists, my heart sank because I knew we would have no rest until we presented again."

The Marriott School’s chapter of Net Impact was organized in 1998. This year club members attended the national Net Impact 2002 Conference, participated in a community service initiative with United Way of Utah County, hosted speakers each month and conducted a service auction which generated two truckloads, one carload and four jeeploads of goods that were donated to 10 Utah charities.

Net Impact is a network of emerging business leaders committed to using the power of business to create a better world. Originally founded as Students for Responsible Business in 1993, Net Impact has developed into a mission-driven network of 5,000. The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally recognized programs in accounting, business management, public management, information systems, organizational behavior and entrepreneurship. The school’s mission is to prepare men and women of faith, character and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Approximately 3,000 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs.