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Students in Professor Zhu Zhu’s business consulting experience course were chugging toward the finish line of their MBA program, they had an opportunity to apply the knowledge they’d acquired to a real-world project by consulting to one of the nation’s largest insurance companies. “We have this relationship with Prudential, and I figured it would look good on my students’ CV, so we worked with them,” says Zhu, associate professor, Department of Management, Feliciano School of Business.

The goal of the project was to drum up excitement for Prudential’s life insurance packages with individuals from Gen Z, most of whom aren’t actively shopping for life insurance. “That’s always been an issue with insurance companies, getting young people to think about life insurance,” says Zhu. “My MBA students were tasked with figuring out what would help Prudential with this problem.”

To provide her students insight into the insurance industry, Zhu designed assignments in which they interviewed seasoned insurance veterans to assess Gen Z’s life insurance knowledge and needs. They analyzed and compared the offerings of Prudential’s key competitors to those of Prudential and generated a set of reports. “They did a lot of analysis before they could make a recommendation to Prudential,” says Zhu.

Students then developed marketing campaigns for three distinct personas and presented their top ideas to a small team of Prudential executives. So impressed with the presentations was Prudential’s CMO, Phillip Edwards, he asked Zhu’s students to present their ideas to the entire Prudential marketing team. “This was a really good networking opportunity for my students. They got to know a lot of people who work at Prudential. Hopefully they can even get job offers,” says Zhu.

As a scholar, Zhu is adept at obtaining useful information from a variety of databases, as are her graduate students. Undergraduate students, however, tend to be intimidated by data. “They see research articles and they’re confused and scared,” says Zhu. To allay their fears, she demystifies the research process by sharing her research methodology with students and helps them find a passion for asking questions.