Daniel Ahye, Jordan Clark, Rey De La Paz, Ruth Nelson (team leader) and Jason Sena emerged as the winners of the UCF College of Business Administration’s Spring 2014 Great Capstone Case Competition. The college hosts this competition every semester. More than 800 students working in 160 teams develop business plans for a specific issue facing the sponsoring organization. These plans are reviewed first by faculty and the field is narrowed to 40 teams that then compete in the presentation competition. The teams pitch their plans to judges from industry and faculty with the top five teams competing in the finals. The competition is the lab portion of the MAN 4720 Capstone class, where students apply the culmination of all they’ve learned in the College of Business Administration to execute this project. Target Corporation was once again the sponsor of this program and asked students to focus on apparel profitability.

View photos from the event (all photos courtesy of Anthony Nguyen).

“The competition forces its students to become data driven decision makers and asks you to step outside of your comfort zone in order to pitch toward business professionals. Being a part of the competition was the best way to end my undergraduate career with the University of Central Florida,” said team member, Jason Sena.

Other finalists included the following teams:

  • Team Prestige WorldWide took second place and included Kristin Ross, Bret DiGiacomo, Casen Gerhart, Vanessa Lippman and Drona Niranjan.
  • Michael Jacobson, Vandon John, Alex Moeller, Daniel Morell and Brianna Nagy comprised Target Practice which won third place.

    • Other finalists included Team Fantastic Four (McGregor Neilson, Courtney Beacham, Corey Barto, and Chelsea Giacobbe) and Team Master Minds (Hannah Dantzler, Emily Johnson, Shannon Russo, Brian Moore and Michael Obermeyer).

    “The Capstone Competition is an opportunity for a company to have its issues crowdsourced by the top students in our college,” said Paul Jarley, dean of the UCF College of Business Administration. “Our students are able to bring new ideas and fresh perspective to these opportunities and offer companies real business solutions. I am very proud of our students for the work they did.”
    Representatives from Target also served as judges at the competition along with College of Business Administration faculty members and select students from the Executive MBA (EMBA) programs.

    Target Executives:

  • Bret Kingsley
  • Danny Bush
  • Travis Blue
  • Grace Blanken
  • Mike Wessling
  • Josh Perez

    • UCF Faculty Members and EMBA Students:

  • Paul Gregg
  • Bob Case
  • Brad Krygier
  • Jennifer Seck
  • Jason Boyd
  • Gerrit Lemmen
  • Tony Orihuela
  • Peter Counce
  • Kevin Kinon
  • Orlando Portalatin
  • Todd Butler
  • Marc Cannata
  • John Leary
  • Tony Padilla
  • Sheryl Gamble

    • Established in 1968, the UCF College of Business Administration offers degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and executive levels. All programs, as well as the Kenneth G. Dixon School of Accounting are accredited by AACSB International – the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

    The college provides high-quality academic programs designed to give students a competitive advantage in the world of business now and in the future. As such, the college establishes partnerships with some of the nation’s most innovative leaders to model new and best practices that harness evolving technology. In addition, the college promotes a unique culture of engagement, risk-taking, cross-disciplinary collaboration and data-driven decision making in an effort to ensure students are well prepared to enter a dynamic marketplace.