For the QUEST consulting project, my team and I worked with the University of Maryland's Dingman Center For Entrepreneurship in order to streamline the inefficient investment process for the organization's underutilized E-Fund(entrepreneurship fund), as the center was not making the number of quality investments desired. With the assistance of project champion Chris Rehkamp, the team provided and laid the foundations for three main recommendations revolving around implementing a revamped online application designed by the team for a more thorough, engaged screening of applicant ideas, creating a student-run venture capitalist group to vet applications and pitches, and utilizing new criteria guidelines to evaluate applicants.

The fundamental issue with E-Fund process stemmed from the fact that Mr. Rehkamp, the project champion, solely evaluated all applicants without enough information about the idea being pitched, making it very difficult for him to award grants without other perspectives. The recommendations suggested by the team directly countered the roots of these problems; the online application was redesigned to vet the applicant more professionally, with technical details on financial projections and business models required to better prepare the student group. The creation of the student group also provided more perspectives as to decide whether the applicant's idea deserved funding while also allowing students to have the unique opportunity to gain exposure to venture capitalism. Furthermore, the team was able to create a recommendation format with investment criteria guidelines; we utilized survey design skills learnt in our QUEST course to interview prominent investment groups on campus to help design the optimal guidelines while also incorporating feedback into our recommendations overall. Fortunately, we were able to test the re-designed process on an actual E-Fund applicant, with the team acting as the Beta group evaluating the applicant pitch and consequently providing a recommendation to Mr. Rehkamp on whether the applicant should receive funding; the recommendation can be viewed above in the project attachments. Mr. Rehkamp subsequently used our recommendation, providing the first bit of concrete proof that our solution may truly end up improving the Dignman Center's current state.

This style of structured problem solving through dissecting a problem and analyzing its causes was a key skill learnt from the QUEST design thinking course that I was delighted to apply to real-world problems. I was able to further bridge the gap to my personal goals of evolving into a well-rounded professional presence through the exercising of many skills such as professional business writing(utilized heavily for the final client report) as well as professional communication skills I was able to demonstrate in the team's weekly meetings with Mr. Rehkamp. The invaluable experience with hands-on teamwork is something that has seriously prepared me for professional work settings outside the classroom, an environment I can now explore more confidently.