LCC Project Manager

This semester I took on a Project Manager role in the LCC. The LCC is a student-led pro-bono consultancy designed to help those who impact wider society for the greater social good. Although our project is in "Stealth-mode," so I can’t reveal too many details. It was great opportunity to look into the UK sun protection market and oversee the development of primary and secondary research.

During the project I; created a shared Miro-board to aid in bringing the team together, fought for the inclusion of more students in client meetings for improved feedback and agile development, put forward and managed the creation of slide decks to generate valuable project discussion between all parties, and worked on the final report alongside my hard working team mates: Srinandni, Ishanya, Charlie, Oliver, Valirie, Felicity, Carl and Zakk.

This was a very rewarding experience. With two happy stakeholders and an amazing team, I highly recommend applying to collaborate at the LCC if you are interested in consultancy or firms creating social impact.

LUBS3990 Innovation Project

This semester, Vicente, Renee, Conor, Nadia, Kareem, Leo, Ife, and I took part in the Innovation; Thinking and Practice module. This university module is designed to present students with real-life problems across one of five industries and give them the opportunity to develop research-led solutions. In Week 10 of the module, the 10 class teams presented their findings to five industry experts, with prizes awarded to the first- and second-place teams.

I'm happy to announce that, after learning about the healthcare industry and the current challenges facing the NHS, my team secured second place overall. Our findings highlighted the cost of a NHS patient hospital stay, how the NHS transportation system could be utilised to address issues surrounding delayed discharges, and emerging technologies that could aid in implementing solutions.

A massive thank you to my team, who put in the extra effort despite having a lot on their plates; to John Palfreyman and Lena Jaspersen for their continual guidance; Barnaby Davies for helping the team breakdown the problem; and to Josh Burke, our industry expert, who generously gave his time throughout the challenge to explain various areas where the NHS could seek improvement. Josh was also kind enough to comment that, in the three years he had been judging, this was the most well-researched healthcare presentation he had judged.

For those curious here is a link to the presentation Link

LUBS2910 Module Appeal

Here is how I spent a year chasing a university assignment mistake and how you can avoid it!

In one of my second-year modules, I worked with a dataset from Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). While analyzing the data, I noticed an inconsistency: the London School of Economics was listed as having 47,904 postgraduate students, while the QS website reported only 6,468. Assuming this was an error, I decided to adjust the data for accuracy. When I received my results, however, I was surprised to see that my approach was marked incorrect. After speaking with the module leader and remaining dissatisfied, I decided to formally appeal.

The appeal took a year, involving many back-and-forth emails, a detailed case submission, and finally a hearing. Ultimately, while my mark wasn’t changed, the typo was acknowledged and the module's assignment guidelines were revised for future students to clarify that data manipulation isn’t permitted.

What I learned
Understand the Assignment's Purpose: Always align your approach with the module's learning objectives. In this case, data manipulation wasn’t taught and Gen-AI threats mean universities need students to stick to briefs.
Academic Integrity Matters: Universities emphasize solving problems independently. However, mark schemes are designed to prevent easy shortcuts which could be shared. Retrospectively I can now see why this wasn't being tested.
When in Doubt, Ask: If something seems unclear—or even if you’re confident—seek clarification during office hours. Specific questions often yield specific answers.

This experience taught me the importance of asking questions early and considering how assignments are structured. I’m glad the module was updated for future students, and I hope sharing this helps others avoid similar pitfalls.

Generative AI Exploration

Towards the end of my second year of university a friend and I delved into AI content generation. AI Stoicism Youtube channels were hitting maturity in the growth cycle and we wanted to understand how they worked. Using website tools such as MidJourney (for images), ChatGPT (for scripts), Eleven Labs (for narrator voice), CapCut (for captions) and DaVinci Resolve (for video editing) we were able to create our own AI channel. Although some work was still needed, three hours of content creation averaged around 30 hours of youtube watch time and 100 hours for our best video. After seeing growth of 150 subscribers for month 1 and an additional linear 150 subscribers for month 2, we pivoted and pushed on.

Next we looked at tools such as Fooocus, Dezgo and ComfiUI which allow the user to generate their own stable diffusion images for free. After exploring stable diffusion and utilizing Civitai for our node models we could now not only create as many free AI images as we liked, but also produce realistic images featuring a repeatable person to place in different scenes. This was exciting, but unfortunately monetisation would mean crossing murky ethical waters we were not ready to traverse and as such we stopped.

Before starting this 3-month AI journey I knew little about AI and was sceptical. I now happily integrate tools such as ChatGPT, NotebookLM, Claude and many more into my life where appropriate. It truly is an exciting space and If you would like to collaborate or talk about AI please do reach out.

Pass Leader

Being a PASS leader in my second university year was a great opportunity to give back to business students. Pass allows first year students to ask questions about anything and everything to do with university life in a purely student-led environment. It was something I took advantage of in my first year and as such was happy to lead five sessions over the course of the year on; settling in, essays and assignments, LinkedIn, examination preparation, and exam tips, to an average of 15 students. Here you can see some of the slides from the first session.

Business Boys Bodcast

For a year Kaif, Hamzeh and I regularly uploaded our Podcasting episodes. Not only did it provide us with commercial awareness of a great number of UK business topics but it allowed us to explore better ways of working everyday. We utilised tools such as Davinci resolve (video editing), OBS (streaming/recording) and Photopea/Canva (Photo Editing) However, what I was most excited to use was Miro. Miro allows for team collaboration in a shared virtual workspace anytime anywhere. Initially, we recorded podcasts off the cuff with research notes. Using Miro however, meant we could transition towards scripted shows with an interwoven story and react to each other in an agile way. Miro also helped us organise the assets used in our videos, significantly improving the quality of our episodes. Unfortunately, after analysis of the Youtube data we came to the conclusion to stop the podcast however, the methods we developed to create the podcast and work as a team through Miro were successful. To the left you can see a rough draft of an unreleased launch video alongside further clips. Press here to take a look at our Channel!

Sim Venture Challenge

Taking part in the SimVenture challenge, a simulation that puts your team in charge of a fledgling bicycle business, has given me a newfound appreciation for the difficulties firms face. After tiptoeing around insolvency and the term "Cash is King" never having been so close to the forefront of my mind, we narrowly qualified. Being the only undergraduate team to do so, we were very excited for the final round against the 6 other teams. We knew though that we needed to step our game up, deciding to specialize each in an area of the business and study the finer details of the simulation.

In the final, the competition was fierce and there were some impressive ideas on display like Lucas Winkelmann's excel model which allowed his team to efficiently break down costs to optimize production. We tried our best however, and after 4 hours of long analysis, deliberation and decision making, I am happy to announce that Hamzeh Qaraman, Kaif Shaji and I won the SimVenture challenge.

I would like to thank Ben Guthrie and the SimVenture team for making events like this possible alongside Brian Baillie and the Spark team for collaborating. A massive thank you also to the judges and in particular Darren Forshaw for his valuable presentation feedback.

Course Representative for Business Management Year 1

Being a Course Rep for my year gave me a great opportunity to get to know and understand my cohort. I created surveys in Qualtrics which were fed back to the business school and from this, data driven decisions were made. Foremostly, the economics module textbook was made free, the economics module became optional for future years and serious discussion was brought up surrounding the Organizational Behaviour group work. I also co-created and co-ran social media platforms to feedback information to students, arranging times with academic staff to promote these platforms in lectures. I found my time as a course rep rewarding and I feel as though I made a positive change.

The Co-Op LUBS Sustainability Challenge

Over the 2023 Easter break, Hamzeh Qaraman, Kaif Shaji and I, decided to take part in the Co-op sustainability challenge. As a completely first year team, up against mixtures of all years up to masters level. We were extremely excited to answer the Co-op's questions around sustainability within the retail franchise model and see what we could find.

After many team meetings, long nights of research and plenty of presentation practice, I am pleased to say that we won the Co-op Sustainability challenge. Although the £200 of Co-op vouchers was nice, the experience of taking part in the challenge was invaluable and I applaud the research insights that all the 6 teams of finalists provided.

It is at this moment that I would like to say a massive thank you To Raj Sharma and Andrea Denny for all the incredibly hard work they put into organizing this event alongside Vera Trappmann. The judges, Stephen Thomson, Sally Chan and all who provided such great feedback. I would also like to commend the members of the university of Leeds Law school for taking the time to explain contract law to Econexus. Aswell as McDonald, Pizza Hut and Fantastic Services whose staff demonstrated high levels of sustainability knowledge within their businesses. A final well done to my team members Hamzeh and Kaif, whose ability to go the extra mile and push boundaries never ceased to amaze me.