The annual Ted R. Winnowski ’63 Student Conference in Business is an opportunity for students from all subjects in business to showcase their research and learning from the year. The conference was divided into four segments: economics and public administration, marketing and management, entrepreneurship and accounting and finance. The event also showcased a keynote speaker, Director of Tax at LVMH Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton, Tricia Carney, a ’94 Siena alumna. Students submit their projects weeks in advance to be selected for the conference, and this event brought them all together to present their hard work. Awards are even given at the end for best paper and presentation in each discipline, as well as an investment award to one of the presenters in the entrepreneur track.
The event kicked off with introductory remarks by Brother Ed Coughlin, then proceeded with the keynote speaker, Tricia Carney. Carney discussed her career journey from Siena to where she is now, and the steps she took to get there. She explained how she realized her passion for tax, and how she advanced in her career by working hard and pursuing what she was passionate in. It was an engaging and informational talk for all attendees.
After the keynote speaker, attendees were invited to split off into separate rooms depending on the presentations they wanted to attend. I stayed in the marketing and management track. The track started with a presentation on how effective Superbowl advertisements are by students Elizabeth Glusko ’20 and Paul Liguori ’20. It then proceeded with a presentation on an analysis of influencer marketing, featuring students Sarah Dicaprio ’19, Danielle DiGiacomo ’19, and Kelly Dokmecian ’19. As a future marketer, Dokmecian discussed how the research she did is useful for society. “Marketing has grown tremendously in the past decade with the emergence of social media, and has progressed even more past just digital advertisements and into influencers promoting the products,” she explained. “Marketers would be able to use the information we found to better target those they are already trying to.” There were five other student presentations in the marketing and management track following the influencer marketing research.
Students can pursue research through CURCA, a class, or independently with a professor. Some students also do it for an honors thesis. Dokemecian described that the work is challenging, but rewarding in the end to learn something new. “It is an amazing opportunity,” she said, “to be able to be creative and research something that interests you, grow and develop skills in the research industry, and work on presenting skills when showing off the research done.”