Organised by the MBA Association of Ireland (MBAAI), teams of MBA students from around the country met in Dublin on Saturday (June 12th) to compete in the MBA Association of Ireland’s Inter-Business School MBA Strategy Challenge.

The NUI Galway Executive MBA team is the proud winner of the top prize after competing against teams from DCU, UCD, University of Ulster and Waterford IT. The final year MBA students strategically analysed a Harvard Business Case over four hours and then presented their findings to a judging panel chaired by Prof Patrick McNamee of University of Ulster and member of the MBA Association of Ireland. In their winning presentation, the NUI Galway team demonstrated analytical rigour, effective teamwork, strategic and operational insights in outlining the future strategy for HTC Corp., the case study for this competition.

Commenting on the win by the NUI Galway team, Dr. Alma McCarthy, Executive MBA Programme Director, stated that “The NUI Galway Executive MBA curriculum has a very strong focus on strategy and prepares students to excel as business and strategy analysts. Winning the MBA Association of Ireland’s Inter-Business School MBA Strategy Challenge reinforces the excellent teaching and learning standards available to NUI Galway MBA students.”

The leader of the NUI Galway Executive MBA Team, Brian Molloy, added "This is an immense and historic result for NUI Galway. The skill-set and toolkit necessary for us to deliver a winning strategic analysis in just four hours came from the two year MBA programme at NUI Galway. Whilst there was a team of five performing on the day, this win demonstrates the calibre and capacity to deliver that every graduate of the NUI Galway MBA programme possesses and that future students will acquire if they take on the challenge of the MBA. It must be very reassuring for employers in the West to know that the local University is producing such a talented pool of MBA graduates."

The winning team included Niall Cunningham, Brian Molloy, Devin Mettler, Bríd Seoige and Declan Staunton from the Executive MBA Programme.

Photo from (l-r): Devin Mettler; Niall Cunningham; Patrick McNamee, University of Ulster and Chair of the Judging Panel; Brian Molloy; Declan Staunton; Bríd Seoige; Liam Fennelly, President, MBAAI. (Photo: Tara O’Reilly)

 Download NUI Galway's competition presentation