Reach out to [email protected] with your interest.
Decide When to Engage in a Project with Foster MBAs
Timeline: Winter Quarter (Jan to Mar) | 10 Weeks
Team Size: 5 to 6 First-year Full-time MBA Students each offering 120 hours of effort
Objective: Engage in a strategically focused project with a discrete scope (see examples below) that will allow our MBA students to apply their skills, expand their knowledge and grow their capabilities, while delivering you evidence-based creative and tangible insights and recommendations.
NEXT AVAILABILITY: Jan 3 to Mar 10, 2023
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: Oct 7, 2022
Timeline: Fall (Oct to Dec), Winter (Jan to Mar) or Spring (Mar to Jun) Quarters | 10 or 20* Weeks
Team Size: 3 to 5 Advanced Full-time or Evening MBA Students each offering 120 hours of effort
Objective: Engage in a strategically focused interdisciplinary project (see examples below) that will engage our 1st-year MBA students to address a business challenge your facing and consider how the identified solutions will impact your business for you to tangibly consider next steps.
NEXT AVAILABILITY: Mar 27 to Jun 2, 2023*
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: Feb 1, 2023
* Projects starting winter quarter are for 20 weeks only from Jan 3 to Jun 2, 2023
Timeline: Spring Quarter (Mar to Jun) | 10 Weeks
Team Size: 3 to 5 of any Full-time or Evening MBA Students each offering 120 hours of effort
Objective: For nonprofit businesses to engage in a strategically focused project with a discrete scope (see examples below) that allows our MBA students to apply their skills, expand their knowledge and grow their capabilities, while delivering you evidence-based creative and tangible insights and recommendations.
NEXT AVAILABILITY: Mar 27 to Jun 2, 2023
PROPOSAL DEADLINE: Feb 1, 2023
“The company actually had other professional consultants also working on doing the same type of work as us, just for another segment, which made it all feel very substantial and true to the kind of work we could be doing post-MBA.”
Jillian Santos, Class of 2023
“Coming from a non-traditional background, I wanted to gain more experience in business prior to starting my internship. Service Corps allowed me to in a valuable and meaningful way. It was a great seeing the application beyond cases and homework problems.”
Mark Patterson, Class of 2023
“This project was extremely helpful in understanding how a small business operates. The lessons learnt working for [this business] can be applied to larger retailers like Costco and Walmart. Overall, it was a great learning experience.”
Nandakumar Sundararajan, Class of 2024
Arranged by functional scope
* Scope of examples best suited for Applied Strategy and Service Corps projects
Strategy
- New business and product assessment, including design, packaging, and distribution channels*
- Customer/user experience journey mapping
- Identifying socially responsible and sustainable business solutions*
- Cost benefit analysis of strategic initiatives
- New Product or service channel optimization
Market Research / Marketing Strategy
- Market research and new product positioning*
- Optimized target customer segmentation and market-sizing*
- Competitor marketing analysis and messaging recommendations*
- Customer lifetime value (CLV) analysis and recommendations for growth*
- Communications and marketing plans for strategic initiatives*
- Strategic launch, including e-commerce and store openings
Finance/Business Planning
- Industry payment terms benchmarking for optimization*
- Landscape assessment and recommendations for increased profitability*
- High-level cost benefit analysis of strategic initiatives
- Pricing optimization
- Asset lifetime value optimization
- Strategic growth plan for domestic and/or international expansion
- Cash flow management optimization
- Carbon offset identification and emissions stabilization strategy with carbon-neutral growth
Operations & Supply Chain
- Cost optimization for supply chain delivery services
- Production efficiency and efficacy assessment with recommendations for improvement
- Outsourcing optimization assessment
Organization Governance/HR
- Employee satisfaction and retention optimization
- Succession planning guide and employee training plan
- Performance metrics scorecard/dashboard toolkit
- Organization structure assessment
What to expect when engaging Foster MBAs
Our program follows the UW calendar, offering three opportunities to engage in 10-week projects with one to six MBAs candidates on a team for a nominal fee. Nonprofit organizations are exempt from fees.
The below four steps are what it takes to engage any one of the three Foster MBA Strategic Consulting Programs described above …
- Consider your business needs and define a discrete scope of work – Connect with Samantha Buhr ([email protected]), the Foster Director of MBA Strategic Consulting with 10+ years of experience at a large global management consulting firm, to discuss how your business can get the most value out of a project
- Submit your project proposal by the deadline listed above – This link to submit your proposal includes an overview of the questions asked to help you prepare
- Finalize logistics & expectations for success – You will be notified if your project is selected or not and asked to participate in a 30-minute meeting with Samantha, prior to project start, to finalize logistics and expectations, if your project is selected
- Schedule the project kickoff with the MBA team – You’ll be introduced to the team the week before the quarter and 10-week project starts, in which they will respond with a request to meet no later than week 2 for an initial discovery and kickoff session, giving the MBA team time to prepare
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Our Foster MBAs
For more information about the Foster MBA Strategic Consulting program, contact us at [email protected] or submit your proposal here!