Campus Greensboro Director Lizzy Tahsuda sits down with one of the winning teams from the inaugural Next in FinTech: Community Challenge. Teams of college students from across North Carolina were asked to come up with financial technology solutions to two pressing problems, one from Cone Health and the other from Piedmont Business Capital.
Thanks for joining us!
This episode is sponsored by Truliant Federal Credit Union
Visit Truliant here
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Today’s host is Lizzy Tahsuda, the Chamber’s Campus Greensboro Director.
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00:58 - Lizzy starts the episode by introducing the exciting Next in FinTech Challenge and sharing details on what the challenge encompassed. A total of 24 student teams with 85 students participated in one of two challenges: one for Cone Health around tele-health access and one for Piedmont Business Capital around minority business resources. Lizzy is joined today by the winning team of the Cone Health challenge, Greensboro College students Richard, William, Lexia, and Natalie!
2:40 - Lizzy asks the students what got them to participate in the challenge. Richard explains that it was encouraged by their professor to get some real world, professional experience with companies and build their resume. William shares that the challenge was appealing because it’s a prevalent, real world problem that Cone Health is dealing with, especially during COVID.
4:40 - Lizzy invites the team to share the solution they created to tackle Cone Health’s technical problems. Richard details how they addressed technical literacy issues using bot technology, as well as addressing hardware concerns to build a long-term solution, by suggesting the creation of “check up kiosks” at community points so people with access issues are able to utilize tele-health resources.
6:53 - Lizzy discusses another important factor of the student teams’ success - their Success Squad, made up of community volunteers! The students explain how their Success Squad mentors were an integral part of how they were able to craft a great challenge project that ultimately won them the competition.
9:00 - Lizzy asks the students what they learned about FinTech and if it’s sparked an interest for them in the FinTech industry. They agree that the concept of FinTech was unknown to them before this challenge, and being involved in the workshops helped them gain an understanding of the industry and possible career paths.
10:45 - The challenge included four different industry-led workshops that went more deeply into specific aspects of FinTech - Design Thinking, A.I. and big data, blockchain and cryptocurrency, and the Future of FinTech - and the students expressed how much they learned through those workshops.
12:17 - Lizzy inquires about the one piece of advice the team would give to other students who might participate in a challenge like this. The students encourage their peers to jump on these types of opportunities, to meet and communicate often with your team, to work independently and collaboratively to see what you come up with, and use your network to build the best knowledge base that you can!
13:25 - Lizzy asks the students for their final thoughts on the challenge and the experience. Natalie appreciated the range of participants from different schools across the state, the access that they gained to community and Cone Health leaders, and Lexia expressed an appreciation for the challenge itself, as it is a very practical and applicable real-world problem that affects so many people.
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Learn more about the Next in FinTech Challenge:
https://campusgreensboro.org/next-in-fintech/
Watch the Next in FinTech Awards Ceremony (and the student teams’ videos) here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/2744168269189726/
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Make sure to follow impact. The Boro on social media!
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @gsochamber
Visit the Chamber website at greensboro.org.
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