Business Students Place Second in Florida Ethics Competition

The Ethical Eagles, a group of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University graduate students from the David B. O’Maley College of Business, recently placed second in the CFA’s (Chartered Financial Analyst) statewide 2022 Ethics Invitational.

"Our team was smooth and thoughtful and handled difficult questions well,” said Dr. Vitaly S. Guzhva, CFA, professor and the team’s academic advisor. “This competition showcased the caliber of students we have here at Embry-Riddle."

The Embry-Riddle team included four business graduate students: Amina Issoufou Anaroua, Fedor Kozhevnikov, Elijah Jenkins and Ryan Kirby. Chris Cannon, CFA, who is chief investment officer at FirstTrust and serves on the college’s Business Leadership Board, was the team’s industry mentor.

The competition, held virtually by the CFA Society of Tampa Bay, required teams of students from multiple Florida universities to evaluate an ethics case. A panel of judges assessed each team’s understanding and analysis of the case, its recommendations and presentation.

“Throughout the competition, I learned how to undertake challenging tasks as a group, work hard at understanding my teammates’ specific skills and work well with one another,” said Anaroua.

The Embry-Riddle team produced and submitted a video illustrating ethical lapses with various recommendations developed by the team. The final round was a live case analysis presentation via Zoom.

Kirby said the competition focused on how wealth managers should focus on acting ethically, and the team made recommendations on ways to improve the current system to ensure ethics is at the core of wealth management.

“This competition was beneficial to me and my fellow team members, as it gave us the opportunity to work on a real example of conflicting interests between wealth management and their clients,” Kirby said. “We learned ways of thinking and acting ethically while maintaining the predetermined framework to invest on behalf of the client."

All first-round videos are available on the CFA Society of Tampa Bay’s YouTube Channel.