Two students represented USI Romain College of Business at the 2019 Beta Gamma Sigma Global Leadership Summit. Seniors Miles Dixon, accounting and finance, and Valeria Ivanova, finance and economics, participated in this year’s event which was held October 31 – November 3 in Chicago, IL. Both were inducted into USI’s chapter of BGS in the spring 2019 induction.
Students at the 2019 Global Leadership Summit; Valeria on far right and Miles fourth from right.
Beta Gamma Sigma's Global Leadership Summit is a premier annual event where hundreds of the highest achieving students from the top five percent of business schools around the world (AACSB accredited) gather for a unique learning experience. The GLS allows BGS members to advance their leadership development while building relationships with fellow leaders from BGS chapters around the world. During the Summit, students participate in a carefully cultivated series of leadership sessions designed to build upon each other to culminate in an intensive team competition. Nearly 400 BGS members from around the globe were in attendance, as well as speakers from various industries, representatives from graduate schools, and sponsors and recruiters from global companies, such as GEICO, KPMG, and AACSB.
There were four breakout sessions that included accounting careers and the future of accounting; funding graduate school; the future is global; and building resumes and careers. The numerous speakers throughout the Summit engaged participants with their personal and business perspectives.
The Summit culminates in a business case competition. Forty teams of ten students were given a business problem for a fictitious company and spent several hours preparing their solution to present to a panel of judges. Miles was on one of the winning teams in Best Practices in Organizational Innovation Following Implementation of New Technologies. “I knew we did well because our team was one of the few to get questions from the judges.” His team’s case focused on Flying Parts, an airplane parts manufacturer that had upgraded to a new computer system. The company was experiencing employee dissatisfaction issues because of numerous policy changes that weren’t being communicated properly by the management team. “I knew ahead of time there was a case competition at the Summit. I had expected it to be numbers based, but that would’ve required much more time than we had,” Miles said. “Instead, It was more focused on communication and our presentation skills, which are skills that employers are looking for.”
Miles’ favorite part was the case study competition as well as all of the connections he made, including fellow BGS members from Oklahoma, Long Island, and Vietnam. Does he encourage other BGS members to attend? “Yes! You’ll meet so many people there!” he said.
This annual leadership event really is global; BGS closed by revealing that next year’s Summit will be held in Japan.
Published December 17, 2019