The CC Consulting Club has thrown around the idea for a case competition for several years, but it wasn’t until now that it became a reality. Last spring, Consulting Club Co-leaders Sasha Akinchina ’25 and Emmet Shuman ’26 attended a career networking event in Boulder, where they were introduced to the president of the Leeds Consulting Group – the consulting student organization at the University of Colorado Boulder – and pitched the idea of a case competition to him. Akinchina and Shuman spent the next seven months collaborating with him and the Daniels Consulting Group – Denver University’s consulting group – to structure the case competition.
The result was the first-ever Rocky Mountain Case Competition (RMCC), which was hosted on the CU Boulder campus on Nov. 8, 2024, with teams from CC, CU Boulder, and Denver University participating. CC team members Will Peterson ’27, Justin Boder ’27, Nico Davis ’27, Dana Mulco ’27, Alexandra McCarthy ’26, Claire Babcock ’27, and Dominik Kaminski ’27 traveled to Boulder for the competition. Their 15-minute presentation was followed by a Q&A session from judges.
The competition was designed to bring together business students from the three schools to showcase their ability to tackle real-world business problems. The competition this year was focused on sustainability with a public service lens. The competition judges were industry experts from different consulting firms, such as Guidehouse. McKinsey & Company, Plante Moran, and Deloitte sponsored the competition.
“Our goal in organizing the case competition was to expose the upcoming members of our club and student body to professional pathways after CC,” says Shuman, a Mathematical Economics major and Computer Science minor who intends to begin his career in economic or management consulting. “The challenge and presentation were intended to simulate how to make efficient and strategic decisions for an institution and provide an opportunity to apply material and skills learned in the classroom.”
CC’s team of seven had two weeks to work on a sustainability-themed business case and prepare a presentation with their recommendations. All teams competing in RMCC had the same two-week time limit and prompt.
“The overall experience from the consulting case was phenomenal,” says Boder, a Business, Economics, & Society major with an Arabic, Islamic, & Middle Eastern Studies minor. “I felt challenged every single day working on it, thinking about new ideas and making our ideas better. What made it more difficult is that I didn’t have any experience with these kinds of cases, so everything looked foreign to me.”
The team was tasked with finding a solution for a state agency that created an app that was not getting the engagement levels the state wanted in certain Colorado counties.
“We came up with a few solutions like public advertising, making the app interface more friendly and personable, and implementing the app into the community,” Boder says. “I learned so much from this experience. First, I realized how important teamwork is in this kind of environment. Teamwork is everything. Second, I learned so much about consulting and how to think outside the box. Creativity and problem solving is the root of consulting. How can I help this company? What can I improve? Who am I reaching? These are all questions that I will now ask myself when doing another case competition.”
“The Block Plan definitely translates to project-based consulting work. You have a short period of time to work with a small group of people on a hyper-specific topic. Definitely more applicable to the Block Plan than a semester-based school program.”
Will Peterson ’27
The team spent the first week solely brainstorming, which left a week to do research, form solutions, and create a presentation. Team members say this was a time crunch, but it also gave the group a sense of urgency to get it done in a productive and timely matter.
“The Block Plan prepares us well for this kind of presentation as we’re constantly working in a time crunch, and the work needs to be pristine,” Boder added. “These lessons are key to life. There will always be deadlines and stress with work, but this taught me how a group can overcome these obstacles and get the job done.”
While the two-week turnaround time might concern some college students, CC students are used to it.
“The Block Plan definitely translates to project-based consulting work,” says Peterson, a Business, Economics, & Society major and Anthropology minor. “You have a short period of time to work with a small group of people on a hyper-specific topic. Definitely more applicable to the Block Plan than a semester-based school program.”
CC’s team attempted to increase engagement on a carbon calculator app with the purpose of gathering carbon emission data from Colorado residents.
“We choose to tackle the problem with a three-step approach: ACE. Advertise, Connect, and Engage,” says Peterson, who added that one of the reasons he is interested in consulting is because he recognizes the connections between consulting and anthropology regarding understanding the consumer’s interests and needs, so it allows him to combine his two areas of interest.
McCarthy, a Mathematical Economics major and Human Biology & Kinesiology minor, says that the team met regularly to brainstorm and streamline ideas into one complete recommendation, which emphasized the collaborative nature of the competition.
“Through this process, we flowed through a few ideas, with each one morphing into the next,” says McCarthy, who joined the club last year and is now co-leader. “We collaborated and built off each other’s ideas to ensure that we were covering all our bases and responding to the prompt completely. I think that the Block Plan did a great job of preparing us for this tight timeline. We were able to divvy up the work and pace ourselves in a functional way.”
McCarthy says one of her favorite parts of the competition was discussing the case with the other teams during lunch.
“It was very cool to see all the different teams prepping in their study rooms at Leeds,” she added. “I also thought presenting in front of real consultants was an incredibly useful experience in terms of professional development.”
Team members agree that this experience taught them important lessons that they plan to keep with them in the future.
“Presenting our research and proposed solutions to judges from consulting companies was both exciting and rewarding,” says Mulco, an Economics major who transferred to CC this year and was excited to join the Consulting Club as her previous school did not have one. “It taught us valuable skills in public speaking and professional-level presentations. One of the biggest takeaways was learning how to navigate ambiguity—analyzing a case with limited information and still delivering clear and actionable recommendations. Knowing the case thoroughly and being able to respond confidently and thoughtfully to the judges’ questions was a key highlight. This experience not only enhanced our presentation skills but also prepared us to handle similar high-pressure situations in the future.”
Mulco says that the hardest part of the case was coming up with effective solutions to the problem, as they had limited background information on the case and no defined budget. The lack of constraints meant their solutions had to be very broad, which made narrowing down actionable recommendations challenging. Additionally, team members say that working on a fictional case was particularly difficult because they couldn’t necessarily draw direct comparisons to real-world examples or rely on existing frameworks.
Staff from CC’s Career Center have served as the club advisors for the Consulting Club since it was founded in 2018. Over the summer, Emma Fairburn, Career Consultant and club advisor, helped guide student leaders on how to approach and organize the competition. Two days before the competition, the team presented their slides to a group from the Career Center, who offered them feedback on clarity and style.
“The entire office is so proud of these students,” Fairburn says. “They worked incredibly hard to put together a quality presentation, collaborated well together as a team, and traversed through some dicey weather to present their final product! We are impressed with their willingness to put themselves out there and are excited to see more CC students participate in case competitions in the future.”
While the competition is over, things have not slowed down for the Consulting Club. Last year, the club served as consultants for the Career Center, where the students worked on a year-long student-led study entitled, Engaging and Retaining First and Second Year Students in the Colorado College Career Center, which included a 34-page report and presentation. The club is now working on a project with the Office of Alumni Relations to increase engagement with alumni throughout their careers, as well as between alumni and current students. The club-wide consulting project is focused on providing both short-term and long-term recommendations and solutions.
The Consulting Club has grown a lot in the last couple of years, both in terms of members and opportunities. Last year’s year-long project had six members and this year’s has more than double that.
“With this growth, we hope to run projects with clients outside of CC in the coming years, helping to improve businesses here in Colorado Springs by offering pro-bono consulting services while helping students develop skills and explore potential career paths,” says Co-President Greg Phillips ’25. “Sasha and I are super happy that we’ve been able to provide CC students with the opportunity to work with clients and simulate what consulting work actually looks like.”