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UCD Smurfit School students take home top prize at Accenture ‘Leaders of Tomorrow’ Awards

Date: 23 Apr 2008

Second Smurfit Business School team also shortlisted in national competition 

Dublin, April 23rd 2008: Two students from UCD Smurfit School took home the top prize at the inaugural Accenture Leaders of Tomorrow Awards held in Dublin on April 23rd. The team of Laura McGreal, from Castlebar, Co. Mayo, and Annemarie McCormack, from Stillorgan, Co. Dublin, both students of the Master of Business Studies in Strategic Management and Planning, took home the specially commissioned Leaders of Tomorrow trophy and will now participate in the Accenture Global Leadership Experience - a tour of Accenture sites in the US, India and France.

The winning team was one of two from UCD Smurfit School to make the final.  CEMS International Master in Management students Florian Windeler, Michele Minetti, and Enrico Fontana, who hail from Vienna, Stockholm and Copenhagen respectively, also made a presentation to the specially assembled judging panel at Accenture headquarters last week. 

The Accenture ‘Leaders of Tomorrow Award’, open to third-level graduates across the country, seeks to recognise, identify and foster the next generation of talent that will help in shaping the public, private and social landscape of Ireland in the coming years.

According to Mark Ryan, Country Managing Director for Accenture in Ireland said, “We were delighted with the standard of entries for this, the inaugural Leaders of Tomorrow competition, which has seen a fantastic response from our third level institutions.  The calibre of the judges on our panel is further endorsement that leadership and the nurturing of future talent are seen as a key priority across Ireland’s public and private sectors.” 

The judging panel, chosen from the top ranks of the Irish private and public sectors and Accenture personnel, included Donal Forde, Managing Director, AIB; Julie O'Neill, Secretary General, Department of Transport; Paul O’Riordan, Managing Director, Oracle Ireland; Mark Ryan, Country Managing Director, Accenture Ireland; Marian Corcoran, Head of Management Consulting, Accenture Ireland and Ismail Amla, Head of Human Capital Strategy, Accenture Global.

The finalists comprised of a mixture of groups and individuals drawn from Ireland’s third level graduate community, with representatives from NUI Maynooth, UCD Quinn School of Business, the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and DCU.

The winning prize is designed to provide a hands-on understanding and appreciation of the changing business, technology and leadership landscape which faces Irish leaders today.  The trip will include visits to Bangalore, India, an emerging economy, Sophia Antipolis, France, a centre of innovation and New York City, a global business hub, which will provide the opportunity to experience some of the different economies, global locations and innovation trends which will shape the environment in which Ireland will need to continue to compete.

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