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Levey ’02 and team win competition
An outstanding presentation of strategic recommendations for Southwest Airlines by Michael S. Levey ’02 and his University of Delaware teammates won the
annual George Washington University/KPMG case competition. Levey, an economics and business graduate, is an MBA student at Delaware’s AlfredLernerCollege of Business & Economics, one of 20 MBA
programs to send a team to the competition.
Entrants were asked to examine what Southwest needs to do to maintain its preeminent position in the airline industry, given the challenges of terrorism and global economic uncertainty.
The goal, said Levey, was to tie together all key functional areas of business—marketing, financial aspects, operational strategy and formal presentation skills. Each team made a formal presentation followed by questions from six judges that included two Southwest executives. In addition to first-place honors, Levey’s team won the “Company Executives Choice Award” from Southwest: a $2,000 prize and free Southwest tickets.
Levey credited Lafayette— where professors were available outside the classroom and challenged him to achieve—for helping him build a work ethic that has carried over to graduate school. Thomas Bruggink,
professor of economics and
business, advised Levey on his honors thesis on airlines’ hub
and spoke networks.
“My experience writing a
thesis on the airline industry at Lafayette helped me approach this year’s competition,” said Levey. “When I saw the case was on an airline, I was immediately fired up!”