SAS Leadership Challenge

April 20, 2018

By Laura Perch

The Class of ’19 Buckeye Leadership Fellows cohort ended this semester with their final leadership challenge. 

The challenge partner was SAS Software, a software company that offers services to a variety of industries from pharmaceutical companies and banks to academic and governmental entities. SAS is headquartered in Cary, North Carolina, employs more than 14,000 people, and is routinely ranked by Fortune as one of the best companies to work  for.

SAS Software has a hypothesis, that data without analytics is value that has yet to be realized. Although, they are considering the question: does all data benefit from analytics?

The student teams of 4 and 5 had quite a challenge in front of them. The first prompt proposed was to determine the estimated global economic value of transforming data into intelligence with analytics. They were also challenged to investigate real world, industry examples of how our lives could change in a positive, but also a negative way as a result of this.

After working on this project for the entirety of the semester, the teams had the opportunity to present their final projects in North Carolina to SAS directly. All attendees were impressed by the professionalism and level of preparation that the Fellows displayed. Congratulations to the winning team- Ellen Antonaides, Caroline Corona, Madeline Bogard, Qasim Khan and Savannah Sockwell!

Next semester, the ’19 cohort will construct and present their final work in BLF, their capstone projects. We look forward to seeing the Fellows finish out their time in the BLF cohort strong!