Asper students excel in case competitions during the 2025-26 academic year

330 students. 379 volunteers. 37 competitions across the globe. Asper’s case competition program almost sounds like The Amazing Race. Honestly it’s not that far off. 

What’s a case competition? You can find them in countless business schools and hotel banquet rooms across Canada and the world. Essentially, they gather teams of business students to compete against each other to solve case studies. 

Given a real-world business and a real-world problem, students are given a time limit to come up with their solutions. They then present the solutions to a series of judges—which often feature high-ranking executives of the companies they’ve been asked to study (yes, it’s very scary).

As the 2025-26 season came to a close with the fourth annual Celebrating Case event on April 28, 2026, Asper students celebrated some of their biggest wins, and most importantly, the community of volunteers, students, and alumni who support the rigorous training of Asper case teams. 

Without further ado, here are some highlights of Asper’s most successful case year yet.  
 

Asper’s biggest case win, ever.

The scene as Asper won the largest & longest consistently-running case competition in the world truly felt like it was out of a movie.  

In the Drake Centre as the team presented their final presentation, you could find groups of students huddled around computers playing the livestream as if it was the Olympic gold medal hockey game. 

It’s even more amazing that attending this competition was not initially in the cards for Asper. Upon their initial application, Asper was waitlisted and didn’t expect to get in. 

It was underdog story all the way as Asper was randomly placed in a division with two infamously strong teams… but won at every turn. Their win earned them Asper’s first-ever entry into the Champions Trophy tournament, which gathers the winners of the year’s biggest competitions for what could perhaps be called a “battle royale.”

Kayla Odidison, a case veteran at Asper, had already planned an exchange before the team was accepted the competition. She flew from London (as in the UK, not Ontario) to meet the team in Montreal for the competition. 

Odidison said that this win was the perfect capstone on her growth in case, as she graduates from the BComm program in June. 

“Earlier on, I saw winning as a way to prove to myself what I was capable of,” she said. “This time, I entered with confidence in both my abilities and my team as we represented Asper on a global stage. The opportunity to show we can be competitive with top schools made it especially meaningful.”
 

Asper conquered Montreal this year by being the only team to podium in both the John Molson Undergraduate and Graduate program competitions.

This team, which consisted of working professionals from the engineering (Watson, Heard), logistics (Moskal) and marketing (Baca Soto) industries, showed an incredible change throughout their training that allowed them to thrive. 

Coaches Chelsea Kokan and Geoffrey Hurd, and the team themselves, both admitted that they gradually learned that what made business interesting wasn’t stats or logistics, but people. 

This realization took their presentations out of the realm of boring numbers and into the realm of exciting storytelling with human characters.  Riley Moskal will always be grateful for the case program elevation of his regular lecture experience. 

“Out of everything in the MBA program, I probably took the most out of doing case competitions, because it allows you to work with teams, understand how to work with people, take unique perspectives and put everything together into one good idea,” he said. 

Read more about this win in the UM Today Story “The Sport for Business Minds”

This season, Team Asper won the Alberta External Non-Profit Case Competition for the third year in a row—demonstrating that across classes, Asper students excel in creating innovative, community-based solutions. 

“Non-profits are the unsung heroes of the economy with the noble mission of prioritizing people over profit,” said competitor Sean Ehmann, who found a fun challenge in the need to think originally when working in non-profits. 

“From a business perspective, they are fascinating. Despite important purposes, they often lack the resources to sustain themselves. This creates a necessity for innovative and out-of-the-box strategies to able to keep the lights on and further their social aims.”

With other teams often staying in the same hotel as you, and other summer-camp-adjacent activity-based days that create connections, Sean also highlighted that case competitions are a great opportunity to meet competitors and make a global network. 

“Getting to connect with people from across the country and around the world created an experience that exceeded our expectations,” Sean said.
 

Aahan Rajput was in his last semester at the Asper School and told himself that he would try a case competition while he still had the chance. He’s very glad he did. 

“It has truly made me a more confident person,” he said. “The adrenaline of being on stage and celebrating with my teammates will stick with me forever. It has made my university days more special.”

He and his team had an especially challenging case ahead of them. The Business Management Case Competition takes place in Guadalajara, Mexico. International cases require students to analyze business in a completely new cultural context. 

“It became such a culturally immersive experience for the team,” said Judy Jayasuriya, who alongside alumni and industry leaders, spent months helping the team learn how business relationships function differently in Mexico. 

“You have to learn to present business solutions that intimately fit the environment that those companies are in,” she said. 

As Aahan and his team developed 360-degree solutions for a high-end furniture company, a popular seasoning blend producer, and a local football club, it’s clear their recommendations struck a chord. 

“We threw everything into our presentations and performance,” he said. “To see it pay off was surreal.”