We had the opportunity to witness the energy, excitement, knowledge, and passion students at the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah have for technology and problem solving. 19 Student teams comprising of 72 students competed in the Eccles-WHOlives Social Impact Challenge, sponsored by Adobe from Oct 15-23, 2020. This event was in partnership with WHOlives, a non-profit organization focused on improving the lives of people in Kenya and Uganda by providing access to clean water (https://wholives.org/our-mission/mission/), Adobe, and the Information Systems Program at ECCLES. Student teams create websites to promote WHOlives’ programs using Adobe Spark. This event brought together students and industry leaders in helping students learn valuable industry skills and provide networking opportunities with prospective employers, all while solving one of the world’s biggest problems — The UN estimates that 3.4 million people die every year due to the lack of clean water.

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS!

1st Place – Team 4

Alexa Maciel
Alexandra Silva
Annie Bounthot
Benjamin Trujillo
Wendy Yu

Spark Page

Video Presentation

First Place Team Interview

Awards Ceremony

2nd Place – Team 9

Kristina Schiffman
Molly Gallagher
Hanna Leslie

Spark Page

Video Presentation

3rd Place – Team 18

Cynthia Wang
Brian Pham
Daren Thai

Spark Page

Video Presentation

The David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, together with Adobe and WHOlives, a non-profit organization, is hosting this event to promote technical literacy among U of U students as well as to raise awareness for the need for clean water for citizens of the world.

Register your team by Oct. 14, 2020 at 11:59 p.m.

Kickoff

Oct. 15, 2020
4:30 p.m

Join via Zoom

Design Principles Workshop

Oct. 16, 2020
2:00 p.m

Join via Zoom

Awards Ceremony

Oct. 23, 2020
5:30 p.m.

Join via Zoom

1st prize

$500 per team

2nd prize

$300 per team

3rd prize

$100 per team

Background:

Wholives is a non-profit organization focused on improving the lives of people in Kenya and Uganda by providing access to clean water (https://wholives.org/our-mission/mission/).
We are partnering with Adobe and WHOlives, in hosting this competition where student teams create websites to promote WHOlives’ programs. The event will bring together students and industry leaders to help students learn valuable industry skills and provide networking opportunities with prospective employers, all while solving one of the world’s biggest problems. The UN estimates that 3.4 million people die every year due to the lack of clean water.

How will this work?

This is open to any undergraduate students at University of Utah. Participating students will be divided into teams of 3-5 (at least 2 business students).
Each team will leverage Adobe Spark to create the most effective fundraising website using data and assets from WHOlives.
Teams will compete for 1 week to see which website is the most effective across key judging categories (provided later).
Winners will be selected based on judging criteria and prizes will be awarded.
This event will be 100% virtual via ZOOM.

Benefits to you:

Gain high-demand skills with Adobe Spark, data visualization, marketing, and communication. (Don’t know Adobe Spark, we will teach you in a workshop)
Network with industry leaders. Professionals from these firms may participate (Adobe, Pluralsight, Progressive Leasing, Domo, Smart CRO, Oracle).
Work with Eccles career coach to prepare towards future internships.
Participate in a meaningful social cause to bring clean water to Kenya and Uganda.
All while having a lot of fun, competing with other teams!

DESIGN PRINCIPLES WORKSHOP

You don’t need to be a designer to create a compelling webpage with Adobe Spark. Join us to learn basic design principles to enhance your fundraising page for the Eccles WHOlives Social Impact Challenge. Hear from Brian Deaver, President and Chief Creative Officer at Contravent and Sara Bolmholdt, Senior Marketing Manager at Adobe, as they provide tips and tricks for anyone (designers and non-designers) to make their ideas stand out.

Sara Bohmholdt

Brian Deaver

About Sara Bohmholdt

Senior Marketing Manager, Higher Education Campaign Marketing – Adobe

Sara Bohmholdt is Adobe’s Senior Marketing lead on the Creative Cloud Enterprise Higher Education team. She joined Adobe in the fall of 2016 to develop and lead the marketing programs for Higher Education Institutions. She now runs all routes to market across Higher Education and is the global lead for both Adobe Creative Cloud and Document Cloud in Education. Sara brings years of experience in media and marketing strategy as well as building out new product solution offerings within both agencies and in-house marketing teams. Sara spent nine years developing brands and launching marketing programs for technology startup companies and consulting for SMB companies. For the past 12 years, before joining Adobe, Sara has focused on higher education marketing where she led student acquisition for institutions across the country in addition to running the agency’s branding and media services team. Sara is also a mentor for the Westminster MBA Capstone program working with students to provide guidance and coaching in completing their final project for graduation. Sara has participated in numerous volunteer positions while being at Adobe, including; the Grant Review Panel determining which non-profit organization proposals should be funded, the Pro Bono Initiative Residency which addresses and solves a critical need within a non-profit, and various leadership programs.

Sara is a graduate from Westminster College, where she received her MBA in Business Administration with a Marketing emphasis. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, yoga, travel, reading, baking, volunteering, health and wellness coaching and supporting local theater.

About Brian Deaver

Brian was smaller than most high school football players, so he had to learn early on how to tackle challenges much, much bigger than himself. That ability has served both him and the creative teams he’s built and led into scrimmage over the years. With over 20 years of experience in the agency, Brian has helped solve creative challenges for clients like Verizon, Nokia, American Diabetes Association, Adobe and MasterCard.

Brian doesn’t command respect—it’s simply given to him, by virtue of the hard work he puts in for every client and the interest he invests in every team member. He knows exactly when to step in and when to give creatives their space, as well as how to collaborate with strategy and other teams to architect winning plays. This ability to unify strategic and conceptual thinking, combined with his unique brand of creativity, has earned him both professional and personal recognition.

Brian (Deaver is actually preferred—maybe from all of the times Coach Lovett yelled at him to keep his head on a swivel) is currently President and Chief Creative Officer at Contravent. Prior to this, he was Executive Creative Director at MRM//McCann and has also served as President of AIGA’s Salt Lake City chapter.