Elevator Pitch Competition Finalists Battle It Out
The Institute for Entrepreneurship hosted the Elevator Pitch Competition finals on Monday, November 20. The participants, who were the winners of the earlier rounds in the competition, competed in four categories: Advocacy Pitch, Design Thinking, Personal Pitch, and Business Idea.
An Elevator Pitch is a quick way of communicating the fundamental elements of a project, a business idea, a social cause, or even one’s professional qualifications and capturing the other person’s attention to prompt him/her to action. In the JCU format, students have one minute to advance their idea as convincingly as possible.
The finalists were judged by a panel formed by:
• Silvia Pulino, Assistant Professor of Business Administration and Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship
• Michael Severance, Operations Manager at the Acton Institute
• Federica Funari and Riccardo Fontana, Save the Children
The winners of the finals were, by category:
Elevator Pitch Fall 2017
Advocacy Pitch
1st place – Chiara Geronzi
2nd place – Gemma Rongoni
3rd place – Giovanni Raguso
Design Thinking
1st place – Riho Fukuda
2nd place – Pauline Gad
2nd place – Alison Arora
Personal Pitch
1st place – Cristiano Nico
2nd place – Ruki Inoshita
Business Idea
1st place – Fabrizia Maurizia Lemmo
2nd place – Anastasiya Shmatina
3rd place – Elisabetta Petrucci
4th place – Stephen Colletti
Each of the four category winners chose between receiving a €100 Amazon voucher or a donation of €100 in their name to a charity of their choice. This year there were also secondary prizes, books on social entrepreneurship, given out to the runners-up in each category, as well as a certificate awarded to all. Michael Severance, Operations Manager from The Acton Institute in Rome generously brought along the books, which he donated on behalf of the Institute.
In their pitch, Chiara Geronzi and Gemma Rongoni advocated for Save the Children, which was represented by two of the jurors, Federica Funari and Riccardo Fontana. Funari and Fontana were so impressed by the pitch of the students, that they enlisted them as volunteers.
