{"id":6048,"date":"2017-07-13T00:24:46","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T16:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/number-one-pwc-challenge\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:07:57","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:07:57","slug":"number-one-pwc-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/number-one-pwc-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"Number One in PwC challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Accounting students Quincy Lan and Natalie Lonyai have won the 2017 Private Clients Business Innovation Challenge organised by global professional services firm PwC.<\/p>\n

The challenge saw small teams of university students tackle real business problems faced by PwC clients, with Lan and Lonyai tasked with finding the most efficient and effective way for a client to operate their fleet vehicles.<\/p>\n

The Curtin team\u2019s winning proposal was to incorporate fully maintained operating leases, increase car salary packaging, encourage additional transportation methods such as Uber and coach hire services, and facilitate corporate partnerships and sponsors.<\/p>\n

The team was awarded a cash prize and an opportunity to be fast-tracked through PwC\u2019s student recruitment process, with Lonyai, a second-year student, securing a position in its end-of-year vacation program<\/a> and Lan, a third-year student, set to begin working in its graduate program<\/a> next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis challenge brought an incredible opportunity to not only develop our problem-solving skills, but also to experience first-hand how PwC\u2019s Private Clients team delivers innovative and thoughtful solutions to their clients every day,\u201d says Lonyai.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we were brainstorming, our priority was the client\u2019s values and their mission statement: we wanted our proposals to support those goals rather than just focus on the bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the competition, the Curtin team received a full-day of coaching and development from PwC staff, who encouraged them to think outside the box and be creative with their solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt surreal to have a PwC director as a mentor and although we felt intimidated at first, we valued every second of our meetings. Her support helped us to push ourselves harder, develop our ideas further and come up with our solution,\u201d says Lan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have always been interested in working at PwC, so this challenge was an ideal opportunity for us to meet people in the firm and learn more about what opportunities are available.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two Curtin students first met a year ago as student representatives for Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand and soon afterwards founded the Curtin Accounting Association<\/a> after recognising there was no accounting-specific club at the University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent that mid-year break doing all of the administration and footwork to form the association, and officially launched in semester two, 2016. We are now in our second semester and are growing faster than ever,\u201d explains Lan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recently began charging for memberships to facilitate more impressive events; it has been extremely rewarding to see that the students believe a membership is valuable enough to pay for, and to hear such positive feedback after our events.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both students are looking forward to finishing their degrees and putting Curtin\u2019s signature combination of theoretical and practical learning into use in the real world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have several programs and opportunities on-campus to build our professional and personal skills, and there is a real focus on industry, which I believe gives Curtin graduates a real edge in the workforce,\u201d says Lonyai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Accounting students Quincy Lan and Natalie Lonyai have won the 2017 Private Clients Business Innovation Challenge organised by global professional services firm PwC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":6049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-6048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-and-global-community"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"Accounting Major","qualification":"Bachelor of Commerce","link":"http:\/\/courses.curtin.edu.au\/course_overview\/undergraduate\/accounting","description":"This major introduces you to accounting principles, auditing, taxation, relevant areas of business law and financial management. You can examine the development and communication of information relating to the financial performance of organisations, learn to prepare reports and give advice on an organisation\u2019s record-keeping and compliance requirements.","faculty":"Curtin Business School"}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Curtin-accounting-students-PWC-competition-win.png","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Curtin University"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 10:46:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6048"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=6048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}