Finance Student Named 'The Next CEO' At Annual Competition
Alex Herman, a Smeal College of Business junior majoring in finance, took first place this year in the college's chief-executive simulation challenge, The Next CEO. Ten Smeal undergraduates participated in the annual competition, formerly called Smeal Survivor, which had them pose as CEOs of multibillion-dollar global corporations to answer questions about how their companies would respond to complex business crises and major world events.
Smeal Student Named 'The Next CEO' At Annual Competition
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (May 4, 2007) – Alex Herman, a Smeal College of Business junior majoring in finance, took first place this year in the college's chief-executive simulation challenge, The Next CEO.
Ten Smeal undergraduates participated in the annual competition, formerly called Smeal Survivor, which had them pose as CEOs of multibillion-dollar global corporations to answer questions about how their companies would respond to complex business crises and major world events.
Kim Brown, a Schreyer Honors College senior majoring in finance, took second place, and Rob Michlovich, a Smeal senior majoring in finance, placed third.
A panel of executive judges chose Herman as the winner for best explaining how his company, Lockheed Martin, is responding to a number of international trends and issues, including climate change, education, immigration reform, and national security.
The judges asked each CEO contestant questions about their corporations in light of major trends identified in a presentation at the beginning of the competition by Erik Peterson, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank. Peterson's "Seven Revolutions" are seven global trends that will change the world by the year 2025: conflict, economic integration, governance, knowledge, population, resource management, and technology.
Contestants were eliminated in three rounds of competition, until Herman was declared The Next CEO, winning the first place prize of $2,000 on PNC Bank Visa Gift Cards, presented by the event's lead sponsor, PNC. Brown won a laptop from Johnson & Johnson, and Shell presented Michlovich with two $300 gift cards—one for Shell and one for Best Buy.
The competition was a culmination of weeks of intensive preparation by the students, including a trip in February to Washington for two study sessions at CSIS, where they examined issues like globalization, international demographics, and China's growing role in the world economy.
Upon returning from Washington, the students were each assigned a corporation, which they studied up until the competition to be prepared to speak like the company’s chief executive.
The first Smeal Survivor competition was organized in 2001 by students Atif Ghauri and Ryan Newman, after Ghauri interned at CSIS. Through the ongoing commitment of Peterson, CSIS, and Smeal, the event has become an annual, public competition judged by corporate partners.
The judges for this year's competition were Miguel Martin, vice president for north east region sales, Philip Morris USA; Julie McHugh, company group chairman for virology, Johnson & Johnson; Samuel R. Patterson, senior vice president and corporate controller for The PNC Financial Services Group; Andrew Seck, business planning and support manager, Shell Exploration & Production Co.; and John Wolfe, vice president and treasurer, Dick's Sporting Goods.
For more on the The Next CEO, visit www.smeal.psu.edu/thenextceo.
REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.
Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.
