The Creighton Business Symposium was held on Friday, October 27, in the Heider College of Business. The annual event was held in CHI Health Center last year but was moved to the classes and auditorium of the Harper Center. This year marks 20 years of the annual event.
The symposium started with registration and breakfast in the foyer of the Heider College of Business. Anyone who had bought the 10-dollar ticket to the event was offered a name tag, breakfast, and the chance to network with the speakers and companies that attended.
Luke Erickson, a junior in the Heider College of Business, said “The business symposium is always a great experience. It was great being able to network and learn from different people in the Omaha community with professional knowledge, especially knowing that a lot of them have ties to Creighton as well.”
The first event was the keynote speaker, Jonathan Badeen. Badeen graduated from the Heider College of Business in 2004 and is the co-founder of the app Tinder. Badeen is the former Chief Officer for Tinder and programmed the original app. Before becoming the co-founder of Tinder, Badeen had worked for Casting Networks, Chegg, Inc., and Hatch Labs.
In his speech, he recounted his days as a student and explained how he got into the business. Mason O’Connell, a Junior in the Heider College of Business, said “The big takeaways of the day are to firstly always be intellectually curious, and secondly a quote from Jonathan Badeen’s speech: ‘The harder you work the luckier you get.’”
The symposium also offered three breakout session opportunities throughout the day. Some of these sessions included panelists of financial planners, investment bankers, human resource specialists, marketing specialists, management specialists, and artificial intelligence specialists.
Students have the choice of three to five different panels that last 45-minutes each. Charis Cook, a sophomore in the Heider College of Business, said “The panelists provided a variety of perspectives and knowledge on the topic of AI that sparks discussion for the future.” Cook went to the panel named “Unlocking AI’s Potential: Navigating the Future”, which was one of the several panels offered to attendees.
After each session, students were allowed to network with the panelists and the companies that were set up in the foyer.
The last event offered was the free luncheon located in the fourth-floor ballroom. This allowed Creighton students to network with each other and get to know the speakers while enjoying the food provided by the university.
The Creighton Business Symposium also invited local high schools to attend the event. The high school students had a slightly altered schedule and were not invited to the keynote speaker. However, they were able to network and ask questions throughout the day and were invited to stay for the lunch that Creighton supplied.