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Thunderbird students to compete in the Hult Global Case ChallengeThunderbird students to compete in the Hult Global Case Challenge

 A team of four students from Thunderbird has been accepted to compete in the San Francisco regional round of the Hult Global Case Challenge, an international business competition with a $1 million prize. The theme of this year’s competition is the global clean water crisis.
 
The Thunderbird team is made up of Vicente Armendariz MBA ’11, a strategy and business development expert with a background in Latin America and multicultural markets; Raj Arumugam MBA '11, a supply chain and consulting professional with extensive experience working for a Fortune 500 company in the U.S. and China; Marielle Covington MBA ’11, a digital media and marketing expert who has worked in the U.S. and Europe; and Therese Giambona, a finance professional and returned Peace Corps volunteer to Costa Rica who has worked on microfinance projects in Africa and India.
 
On March 5 the team will head to San Francisco, where they will be given a specific case and have three hours to prepare their presentation. In order to advance to the second round in the competition, the Thunderbird team has to beat out rival proposals from nearly 30 top schools, including Stanford, UC Berkeley, National University of Singapore and University of British Columbia. A panel of experts, including Craig Newmark, founder and CEO of Craigslist and Gary White, executive director and co-founder of Water.org will judge the student teams.
 
The winners of five regional rounds and the winner of the online competition will head to New York to present their proposals before President Bill Clinton and Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org. The team that wins in the final will be awarded a $1 million prize that will go towards working with Water.org to implement their clean water solutions.
 
The case topic has special significance to the Thunderbird team members, who from their work abroad have seen how critical clean water is to low-income communities around the world. For team member Raj Arumugam, the topic is more personal.
 
“Growing up in rural India, I knew from a very young age the consequences of not having clean water,” he said.
 
It is estimated that one billion people, or nearly one-eighth of the world’s population, do not have access to clean water. As the world becomes more urbanized, this crisis is being compounded. With this in mind, the Thunderbird team has been focusing their research on innovative business solutions that would help make clean water more accessible.
 
The team has taken a collaborative approach to helping solve the case, by enlisting Thunderbird professors Richard Baer and Michael Finney to help with strategy and delivery, as well as building a campus-based student team that will collaborate remotely the day of the competition. The team will also collaborate with alumni who are working in the development space.
 
“Hult’s Case Competition is an ideal platform through which us, as Thunderbird students, can fulfill the school’s mission ‘to create sustainable prosperity worldwide,’” Armendariz said.