New York City, March 27, 2012 – Dan McCann, BCom’11, and Amy Bergenwall, BCom’08, MSC’10, scored top honours in the international category of the NYC Next Idea Global Business Plan Competition. This annual competition, sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Columbia University’s School of Engineering, encourages innovative business ventures to launch and operate their businesses in New York City.
After narrowing the field of 270 applications down to six finalists, the International Track prize was awarded to Dan and Amy’s new venture Stylsize, a mobile and web app with a convenient solution for out-of-store and online apparel purchases. Their app will enable shoppers to visualize how garments fit and flatter their bodies without the frustrating guesswork associated with today’s online shopping.
The pair will receive $17,500 in cash prizes and six months of free office space in order to help them launch their business in New York City.
The 2011 ComputerWorld Canada IT Leadership Award recipients were celebrated on Oct. 26 in Toronto. Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Management Information Systems James McKeen was named IT Educator of the Year, while MBA’07 alum Kalyan Chakravarthy took top honours as IT Manager of the Year for Small and Medium-sized enterprises.
Prof. McKeen was cited for his contributions in co-founding two industry forums connecting leaders in the industry to discuss critical IT issues, in bringing IT research into the classroom and linking graduate students with business leaders.
Kalyan Chakravarthy, Director of IT for the Toronto International Film Festival, was recognized for his contributions in moving the festival’s email platform into the cloud and ensuring a smooth transition of IT services when the festival moved to its new home at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in 2010.
BCom’07s Elie Silver and Jonathan Willis are competing in the City Chase National Championships Sept. 30-Oct. 1 in Halifax in an event modeled on ‘The Amazing Race’ TV show. Eight regional events took place throughout Canada since May with Elie and Jonathan beating out 600 other teams in Toronto to move on and face the other regional champions in Halifax. The final features a 36-hour race that will test each team’s resourcefulness, determination and ability to make decisions on the fly as they search for ChasePoints scattered in unknown locations throughout the city. ChasePoints are designed to test teams with a variety of physical, intellectual, adventurous and humorous challenges.
Elie and Jonathan’s challenge leading up to the final was to create a viral video on YouTube. To help them improve their odds of winning the competition, view the video and pass it on via email, facebook and twitter!
