While case competitions are competitive by nature, that didn’t stop participants in the 2025 Business Language Case Competition from making connections. Students taking selfies with one another and the overlapping sounds of Spanish and Mandarin floating through the air were just some of the signs of the relationship building and skills development that occurred during the course of the event.
The March 2025 competition—the first held since the pandemic—was hosted by the Whitmore Global Business Center (GBC) at the BYU Marriott School of Business, featuring 11 teams from three universities competing in Spanish, Chinese, French, and Arabic. Teams had two weeks to work on the case before presenting to judges in their target language, giving advice for where and how the fictional case company should expand internationally. Indiana University took first place for Chinese, with Brigham Young University teams winning first for Spanish, French, and Arabic.
Autumn Peper, a member of the Indiana University Chinese team that won third place, said, “The competition gives us an opportunity to use our language skills in a more professional, real-life setting.” She found the experience of having to form an opinion and then present, explain, and give recommendations based on that opinion to be a very different experience from simply talking about concepts in a classroom. She noted, “I think being able to learn to articulate that is really beneficial.” Other students also expressed that the competition increased their business knowledge and vocabulary, in addition to enhancing their language learning and presentation skills.
Peper’s teammate Erik Larson said that he thinks events like this are important because of the connections they build with students from other schools: “The competition makes you closer with the people in your program, but it also helps you make more connections outside of it.”
The teamwork aspect of the competition also stood out to Sarah Millett, who competed on the BYU Spanish team that won third place. She explained, “My biggest takeaway is how much easier it is to solve a problem and how much better of a solution you come to when you collaborate with others.”
The importance of languages and cross-cultural experiences was not lost on coaches and participants. “I think it’s very important for every human being—not just the students but everyone—to have some ideas, some perspectives about what’s going on somewhere else,” commented Didier Chanal. Chanal acted as a mentor for one of the BYU French teams, giving the group language coaching, and works as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of French and Italian.
Abigail Juarez, who participated on the Arabic-speaking team that won second place, agreed. The University of Utah student grew up speaking Spanish, as her mother is from Mexico, and started studying Arabic in high school: “Different languages have different ways to express themselves, and therefore you get to see the world through a new lens.”
Juarez’s teammate Adam Cook also has experience with multiple languages, speaking Spanish, Arabic, Ukrainian, and Mandarin, among others. “It’s really hard when you can’t convey who you are to other people,” he said. “So I work really hard on language as a vehicle to people’s hearts. That’s a cliche, but it has really benefited me in my business dealings, in my personal life, and in academics.”
The language competition is one of the GBC’s broader efforts to support international business research and skill development as one of 16 Centers for International Business Education Research that receives support from the US Department of Education. “We believe in being international here at BYU Marriott and at BYU,” said Jonathon Wood, managing director of the GBC. He has seen how learning business languages can open doors. “It allows us to communicate with more people around the world. I think this is being part of BYU as we go out to serve the world. Enter to learn, go forth to serve—languages help us do that.”
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Written by Katie Brimhall