Schulich Students Place Second as First Canadian Team Ever Entered in Wharton MBA Impact Investing Competition

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - April 13, 2016) - The Schulich School of Business at York University is pleased to announce that a Schulich MBA student team has placed second in Wharton's MBA Impact Investing Network and Training (MIINT) case competition. Impact investing is the term used to describe investments meant to produce tangible social or environmental benefits as well as a financial return.

The Schulich team, made up of Sara Salamat, Sana Hanif and Sameer Rashid, won $25,000 US to invest in Toronto-based LegWorks, a for-profit social enterprise that the team pitched as a worthwhile investment during the competition. LegWorks "helps people walk with confidence" by producing high-quality and affordable prosthetics for amputees around the world.

This is the first time a team from a Canadian school has competed in Wharton's five-year-old international impact investing case competition. Schulich tied for second place with London Business School, which also received $25,000. A team from MIT's Sloan School of Management won first place, worth $50,000.

Twenty-five teams from US-based schools, including Harvard, Kellogg, and Chicago Booth, as well as European schools such as London School of Economics and SDA Bocconi School of Management, participated in the MIINT finals at Wharton's campus at the University of Pennsylvania on April 9th.

"I congratulate the enterprising MBA students who successfully represented our School at Wharton's international impact investing competition," said Schulich Dean Dezsö J. Horváth. "Global competitions are just one of the ways we provide our MBA students with valuable opportunities to network with their peers and to hone their business skills and expertise before graduation."

"The Wharton MIINT competition has provided our students with an exceptional occasion to pitch a vital social innovation investment opportunity to real potential investors," said team advisor, Jonathan Hera, a Schulich International MBA graduate from the Class of 2010 and Senior Portfolio Manager at Grand Challenges Canada, an existing investor in LegWorks, who teaches a social finance and impact investment course at Schulich. "Schulich's MBA impact investment team has proven that they can hold their own among their peers from the best business schools in the world."

The Schulich team's participation in the competition was supported by Schulich and Schulich's Social Impact Management Association, a graduate student club.

For more information on MIINT, visit www.themiint.org.

About Schulich

Known as Canada's Global Business School™, the Schulich School of Business in Toronto is ranked among the world's leading business schools by a number of global surveys. Schulich's MBA program is ranked #1 in the world by Corporate Knights, the world's largest circulation magazine with an explicit focus on Corporate Social Responsibility, in a global survey that identifies which schools are doing the best job of preparing future business leaders for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business. Schulich's MBA program is also ranked #1 in Canada and among the world's leading schools by The Economist, Forbes and CNN Expansión. Schulich is also ranked among the world's top 35 business schools for a career in investment banking in a global survey by eFinancialCareers.com. The Kellogg-Schulich EMBA program is ranked #5 in the world by The Economist and #1 in Canada by the Financial Times of London. For complete ranking details, please visit www.schulich.yorku.ca.

Global, innovative and diverse, Schulich offers business programs year-round at its state-of-the-art complex at York University; at its Miles S. Nadal Management Centre located in the heart of the Toronto's financial district; and at its new campus in Hyderabad, India. Schulich also operates a number of satellite centres in Beijing and Shanghai, China; Mumbai, India; Seoul, South Korea; Mexico City, Mexico; and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Schulich offers undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate business degrees that lead to rewarding careers in the private, public and nonprofit sectors, and has 27,000 alumni working in over 90 countries. The School pioneered Canada's first International MBA (IMBA) and International BBA (iBBA) degrees, as well as North America's first ever cross-border Executive MBA degree, the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA. In addition to Schulich's Master of Finance and Master of Accounting degrees, the School launched one of the world's first Master of Business Analytics and Master of Real Estate and Infrastructure degrees. Schulich's Executive Education Centre provides executive development programs annually to more than 10,000 executives in Canada and abroad.