June 2016
We have been busy with company visits this month and it’s been great getting to reconnect with our industry partners – and of course to see our MMIs in action!
The feedback from internship supervisors has been very positive and we are pleased to partner with companies both large and small. MMI students are applying their classroom learnings daily to their roles have found it highly rewarding to also learn on the job from mentors, clients, managers and peers.
Our next big event at MMI will be our Poster Presentation Day on July 13th and we hope you will join us to learn more about what our students have done during the summer. To learn more and to RSVP for the event, please visit http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/mmi/internship-poster-presentations
May 2016
We are very proud and excited to announce that the MMI Class of 2016 has achieved a 100% internship placement rate! Congratulations to all of our students and thank you to our industry partners! MMI values your mentorship and we look forward to many future collaborations.
April 2016
After months of networking, booking coffee chats, interviewing and coaching, the entire class has secured summer internships! We would like to wish all of you the very best as you start your internships over the coming days. Hard work and perseverance always pays off and we hope that you will enjoy putting your MMI studies to use in a real world professional setting.
A special thank you to many company reps who joined us on campus this year to speak about opportunities for MMI students. We couldn’t have done it without you!
March 2016 - We are currently interviewing for the Class of 2017!
It’s an exciting time at MMI – applications are up by 25% and they look strong!
To help you prep for the interview, we recommend that you do the following:
1. Research our program and be prepared to answer how it will help you to meet your career goals.
2. Have examples of past accomplishments ready to discuss.
3. Think of questions you want to ask us! This is your time to put us on the spot!
Good luck to everyone! We are thrilled that so many students are considering the MMI and we look forward to sharing our incoming class profile with you.
GMCA Consulting Case Competition
On Friday November 6th, two MMI teams placed in the week-long GMCA Consulting Case Competition. Team 5 consisting of Jessica Confalone, Nicole Minyi Chen, Pavan Matharu and Guenther Lomas placed first of fifteen teams pitching their strategy to increase company revenues over a two year period. Team 4 consisting of Japnam Padda, Erin Klar, Doug Brennand and Jane Dong placed third amongst all teams.
The competition was a great success for all students in MMI.
November 2015
The GMCA Strategic Management Consulting Case Competition is a week long business case competition where teams of 4 work together to solve a difficult challenge facing a current organizations. This year's case involved developing new strategies to increase Toronto Pearson International Airport's passengers, flights, and airlines. 16 teams were judged by over 30 professional consultants to determine who developed the best strategies and gave the best presentation. MMI students Umar Shaikh, Lauren Reid, Joshua Dunn and Jovan Pinto placed 2nd in this challenging case competition.
The case competition is the culminating event in the GMCA Strategic Management Consulting Conference, which attracts over 150 students from 4 Universities across Canada. Professional consultants from world renown firms volunteer their time to give presentations on industry insights, as well as adjudicate the case competition.
May 2014
The University of Toronto has argued its way back into the top spot at the 2014 North American Debating Championships
Kaya Ellis from U of T Mississauga and Louis Tsilivis from U of T’s St George campus pooled their powers of persuasion to finish in first place ahead other prominent universities from Canada and the United States. The U of T Hart House Debating Club duo faced off against McGill University in the final round of competition last Sunday, with the seven judges awarding Ellis and Tsilivis a convincing 6-1 win. The first place finish sees U of T reclaim the title after finishing runner-up to Harvard University in last year’s final.
U of T now boasts a record six championship victories, ahead of Yale with four and McGill and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with two apiece.
Ellis, a student at U of T Mississauga’s Master of Management of Innovation, was also awarded third place in the top debater category and becomes only the seventh female champion in the competition’s 23-year history.
The format for the debate was a hybrid of the Canadian and US parliamentary systems.
Teams of two were assigned the role of either government or opposition, with a government speaker opening proceedings, followed by a seven-minute rebuttal from the opposition before returning to the government and then final opposition speaker. The first government speaker was also afforded three minutes of closing remarks. Topics ranged from the introduction of economic sanctions in the Kyoto Protocol to the internet privacy rights of foreign nationals and the publishing of information from anonymous sources.
Ellis said that despite popular perceptions of debaters being argumentative, debating clubs mainly attracted students who were open to new ideas and the chance to hear the opinions of others.
“The University of Toronto has been extremely supportive of the debating team,” Ellis said. “The university treats debating as seriously as it does varsity sports and helped to finance the team's trip to the championships in Ottawa.
“The debating club does require a lot of commitment but it’s also a great outlet from course studies and you become friends with a lot of students from other universities.”
January 2014
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Chocolate Scientiest
Elena Grouios works in chocolate factory, inventing new treats. Sweet!
Elena Grouios (BSc 2009 Victoria, MMI 2010) has parlayed her two U of T degrees – in nutritional sciences/human biology and in management innovation – into any chocolate lover’s dream job. The 26-year-old works in a Toronto factory as a product developer for Mondelez International, a food company that manages Cadbury brands, and her business card reads “Product Development Scientist, Chocolate”.
I guess we don’t need to ask if you like chocolate…
You do need to like it in this job, absolutely. My favourite changes day to day, but my favourite when I was growing up was the Wunderbar. And we make Wunderbar here – oh my goodness. So much Wunderbar in my diet right now.
Help us visualize what you do every day. Pouring chocolate into test tubes?
We have different types of equipment that we use to make chocolate from scratch, or make different products into different forms. As a product developer, I formulate and reformulate recipes, do tests on chocolate, and make new products with different flavours. I have to know the basics of fat science and sugar science and milk science to figure out how to make something new. And yes, taste testing is part of the job!
Have you invented a chocolate that’s hit the market?
My first project was the Dairy Milk line extension: new flavours for Dairy Milk chocolate bars. Five of them came out just recently: the pretzel and peanut butter, the toasted coconut cashew, the hazelnut cashew, the salted peanut and the cookie crunch. That was very fun. Seeing them in the store was the ultimate checkmark – so satisfying.
What are the challenges in inventing a new chocolate product?
If you want to put on the science hat, there’s compatibility issues – you can’t put just anything in chocolate. My job is to figure out how to make different ingredients work – and what will be a challenge. Then I frame those technical challenges to the company as risks, or as opportunities for intellectual property or competitive advantages. From a business perspective it’s also what do we think is going to be the next big thing, what do we think our consumers are going to love. For ultimately, our boss is the consumer.
You’ve spent some time in Cadbury’s UK factory, the one that was the inspiration for Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Tell us more about that?
The rumour is that Roald Dahl used to visit that area when he was little, and that’s where his inspiration had come from. The factory is so big, but everybody knows each other and absolutely loves what they’re doing. They’re so passionate. It’s like being in the ultimate science lab, surrounded by chocolate.
Guess they don’t have a shrinking machine or a Great Glass elevator…
I haven’t seen those yet. It’s quite big, so they may be hiding.
What’s the coolest part of your job?
The coolest is making something from scratch, really and truly going from an idea to something that you can hold in your hand. I remember watching a show in a park with some friends, and this guy in front of us was eating a pretzel peanut butter bar, the one I had worked on. He said, “This is the most amazing bar ever!” My friend wanted me to talk to him but I said, “No, that’s okay, this is as happy as I’m going to get right now.”
You don’t realize how much you push yourself, and how much you grow, when you’re doing something that you really are interested in. And in research and development you’re constantly learning – it really keeps your day going. Not everybody can be a chocolate scientist, but people can certainly be in a job in which they love to learn. That’s what makes it cool.
UofTMagazine, December 2013